


Magical Girl Spleens

by twitchtipthegnawer



Category: Original Work
Genre: Angst and Fluff and Smut, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Cunnilingus, F/F, Guro, Hurt/Comfort, Id Fic, Lactation Kink, Oviposition, Sibling Incest, Stuffing, Teratophilia, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-11
Updated: 2019-04-23
Packaged: 2019-06-08 21:09:03
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Underage
Chapters: 18
Words: 33,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15252084
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/twitchtipthegnawer/pseuds/twitchtipthegnawer
Summary: The spleen is an organ which stores a reserve of blood, removes and metabolizes old blood cells, and is vital in keeping the immune system healthy (can’t let an infection spread too far, you know). In humans, it is purple in color.It was once thought to be the center of emotions, much like the heart is treated in today’s society. In humoral medicine, it was the creator of melancholy. In the Talmud, it was the organ of laughter, and in zhōngyī it’s the yin portion of the earth element.It is also the most amusingly named organ.WARNING: this story contains dark themes and is intended for mature readers. Pay attention to the tags, and keep in mind the golden rule.





	1. Realizing Monsters Exist and At Least One Cat Can Talk

Claire was supposed to meet up with Annabelle after school to discuss her slowly dropping grades. For the first half of the school year Claire had been an unassuming C student, withdrawn and practically running away every time Annabelle approached her about wearing her hair over her eyes (was it even possible to read the blackboard?) or participating in class.

And then she’d had an apparent change of  _ attitude. _ Taken to wearing her hair full of bobby pins, which took the blonde ringlets from messy to an absolute riot. To wearing her school uniform skirt hiked up, and looking at Annabelle’s ass in her pencil skirts in a way that made her heart skip beats (or it could all be wishful thinking). A more social attitude, more bright smile, and… steadily dropping grades.

This had been concerning Annabelle, her English teacher, for a while, and she wasn’t going to let another disappearing act slide. So, when Claire failed to show up for a solid half hour, Annabelle went looking for her.

The high school and middle school stood back-to-back and had a jungle gym in the middle between them. She started searching there, because she knew Claire sometimes smoked by the swings with the other children who thought teachers were too wrapped up in their own worlds to notice. Granted, Annabelle only ever watched them for  _ unsavory _ reasons, but still.

Sure enough, she found Claire exactly where she thought she’d be. However, instead of smoking or napping or doing anything else Annabelle had expected, Claire was…

Battling… a… monster?

“Hi Ms. Baker!” The teen shouted as she jumped from the top of the slide. “Sorry for being late, I’m a little busy!”

“I think she can see that,” said a voice behind Annabelle. She jumped nearly a foot into the air, and spun around to see who was talking.

She found a  _ cat _ on the walkway, sitting cool as could be. She would’ve completely overlooked it in her search for the speaker, but it was very obviously  _ not _ a normal cat. For one, its calico patterned fur came in a variety of pastel colors. For another, it had three eyes that shone and shimmered with rainbows as they moved. All in all, he looked like a gay Garfield.

For a third, it wore a thick, white collar with a variety of brightly-colored rhinestones set in it. Currently, a hot pink one was glowing.

Hot pink was  _ coincidentally _ the primary color of the clothing Claire was wearing. Clothing which she certainly  _ hadn’t _ been wearing in class. Including, Annabelle noticed with a blush, a set of panties featuring a heart-shaped cutout underneath her miniskirt.

“What’s going on?” Annabelle said, her voice so faint she thought no one would hear her.

That same voice came from the cat once again, and Annabelle felt she might pass out. “She’s fighting a monster. It’s really not that complicated.”

The huge creature swung one bladed forearm at Claire, and though she dodged it, Annabelle noticed there was already blood slicking down her side. It shone on the left half of her belly and waist, underneath the cropped leather jacket she wore. What little blood was still in Annabelle’s head drained out so fast she actually had to grab a metal railing to keep herself upright. “Isn’t this dangerous?” She asked around the queasiness in her belly.

“‘Course it is.” The voice which came out when the cat opened its mouth was incredibly lazy and distinctly deep, so she was pretty sure it was a male.

“I, ah,” Annabelle watched Claire hop again, defying gravity as she leapt at the creature’s head and swiped at it with a short blade. “She’s my student, I can’t let her r-risk her life like this.”

“Do  _ you _ wanna take a shot at that thing?” Mr. Pastel Cat was openly derisive as he flopped on his side and licked a paw.

“I - I suppose I c-could?”

He paused, finally, and gave her a three way squinty-eyed look. His fat belly rose and fell in a huff as he hauled himself to his feet. “Yes, I suppose you’ll do.”

“Do for what?” Annabelle said, but before the words were even out  _ something _ was happening.

A royal blue rhinestone began to glow to match the pink one as the cat opened his mouth. The air seemed to shimmer around it, iridescence and rainbows, and Annabelle had to blink as her own eyes watered in response. When she opened them again, there was a knife clenched between the cat’s jaws.

It was beautiful, but nothing that Annabelle would want to fight with. The blade belonged on a stiletto dagger, and the handle was all iridescent blue shimmers in a spiral patterned cone, like a unicorn horn. It didn’t have any kind of guard, though. “How am I supposed to use this?”

Ignoring her despairing tone the way only a cat could, he licked his paw again. His next words were almost swallowed by the sound of metal-on-metal behind Annabelle.

“Stab yourself in the head with it.”

Annabelle froze. Stared at the cat. Stared at the knife. “I’m sorry?”

“Stab yourself. In the forehead. It’s really not that hard.”

“I don’t, I can’t, I’m sorry, I - ”

“Did you want to help her or not?”

Turning around, Annabelle saw Claire still clashing with the creature. She was sweating, bouncy curls plastered to her forehead, and the blood on her side was beginning to crack and flake.

Quite apart from the fact that Annabelle was Claire’s teacher, Claire was _ her crush.  _ She knew she couldn’t act on those feelings, couldn’t take advantage of the power she held over a student, but still… she couldn’t leave Claire, specifically, to fight this thing. And perhaps because of how surreal the situation was, or perhaps because the sight of blood had Annabelle too light-headed to think this through, she said, “Yes.”

Pastel cat jumped onto her shoulder as soon as the word was out. She twisted her head, a mouthful of fur muffling her yelp, and then he was jamming the blade into her.

Physics dictated that the blade snap against her skull because of the awkward angle, or that the cat not be strong enough to drive the metal in, or a million other things that apparently didn’t apply at the moment. Her final thought before the metal pierced her was,  _ his fur tastes sweet. _

And then light enveloped her, and the entire world changed.

Or perhaps it was only her perception of it?

Either way, her clothing melted off her body, a warm wash that felt like gentle wet waves dripping down. Then right back up, except this time in the form of clothing she’d  _ never  _ normally wear. Bright blue Mary Jane’s, white tights printed with the palest blue cartoon brains, and then white bloomers with two little bows enveloped her legs.

A blue underbust skirt cinched her waist, and then  _ poofed _ outwards over a frilly petticoat. Under that materialized a high-necked blouse with a lacy cravat and long flounce sleeves, and finally a white hair bow pulled her long, straight, black locks into a high ponytail.

As soon as she opened her eyes once more, the magical transformation effect was somewhat ruined by the blood dripping into them.

_ “Woah, _ Ms. Baker!” Claire shouted from across the playground. “Lookin’ good!”

Rather than focus on that somewhat, ah,  _ distracting _ statement, Annabelle clapped her hands together and then pulled them apart in a movement that seemed to come naturally. From her hands a soap bubble formed, then expanded, enveloping the area Claire and the monster had been fighting in.

“Fuckin’ sweet!” Claire hopped into the air, then - hopped again? “I dunno what you just did, but thanks!”

“Neither do I,” Annabelle said, then covered her mouth with one hand. Had her voice always sounded so confident? And when were her nails so stylishly painted?

“It’s a barrier,” pastel cat said. “People won’t be able to stumble across the fight, now. Useful.”

“But - I wanted to help Claire fight,” Annabelle looked down at her hands, trying to figure out if she was suddenly stronger or faster.

“This  _ does _ help. Look.”

Before long she understood what he meant. Even if  _ she _ wasn’t feeling especially spry at the moment, Claire was certainly moving better than before. And the monster was moving slower. “So, I cast buffs and debuffs within this area?”

_ “Nerd,” _ the cat said with a snort.

After that it didn’t take long for Claire to kill the _ thing.  _ She stabbed it in its weirdly spindly throat, then landed light as a feather on the ground. The creature dissolved into tiny black flakes, leaving behind a normal girl lying on the ground. Claire leaned over, and picked up a silvery shard of metal beside the stranger.

“Shard get!” Claire cheered. Then she turned to Annabelle, and her big, brown eyes were glittering with the force of her smile. “Thanks for the assist.”

“Oh, um. No problem,” Annabelle said airily.

Then her legs abruptly gave out, and she sat down hard on the mulch.

Blearily, she looked up as Claire rushed over to her, the triumph gone all sour with worry. “Oh my god, oh my god. Are you okay? What the fuck?”

“I’m not sure,” Annabelle said. “Are you actually swirling like that?”

“Is she completely crazy now?” Claire said to Annabelle’s shoulder. Or, no, to the cat.

“Nah, but she’s about to pass out,” pastel cat said. “Her knife isn’t like yours. Since she doesn’t use it to fight, it stays in, which’ll let her keep the barrier up. But the longer the barrier stays up, the longer it stays in, and the longer…”

“Oh, I’m still bleeding, aren’t I?” Annabelle laughed lightly and pressed a hand to her forehead. “Should I just take this out then?”

“No, moron,” pastel cat’s tail hit her in the back of the head hard enough to hurt. “Claire, pop the bubble already.”

“Ten four, roger that.”

A moment later what felt like a cool rain fell on Annabelle’s body. Her clothes were abruptly back to the comfortable business wear she’d had on for the school day, and her body -  _ pushed _ the knife out. The sensation made her shudder, but it lasted only a moment, and then she had a (mostly) clean blade sitting in her lap.

There were still a couple chunks on it, and a thin smear of blood. Annabelle swallowed hard.

“Ms. Baker, that was  _ awesome!” _ Claire’s suddenly very loud and very close voice shook Annabelle out of her stupor.

Looking up, she found herself face to face with Claire, now back to wearing her normal clothes as well. “Seriously, you just  _ did that! _ My first transformation wasn’t  _ nearly _ that graceful! Like, woah, and did you see me take down that Corrupted One? So badass. I can’t wait to do it again! We are gonna be the  _ best _ team.”

“Again?” Annabelle was right back to being a mousy teacher, and balked at the memory of what she’d just done.

“Of course,” The cat said. “You didn’t think my gift came free, did you?”

What on earth had she gotten herself into?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Cotton, Claire, and Annabelle work on the concept of informed consent! A challenger approaches, exposition gets dropped, and candy cats prove incompetent mascots.


	2. Answering Exactly Zero Questions

“... that’s why I call them Corrupted Ones. So if another of those monsters shows up, then Cotton’s gonna come get us, and…”

“Oh, for christ’s sake,” Cotton, the cat, said.

“What?” Annabelle and Claire spoke at the same time, Claire cutting off her explanation and Annabelle looking away from Claire’s (glossed) lips.

“Did you retain  _ any _ of that?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said as she crossed her arms.

“What causes Corrupted Ones, then?”

“Shards,” Annabelle answered softly, but without hesitation. “If they get embedded in a person’s skin, they corrupt their form.”

Cotton, in the most supremely bored tone, said, “Half credit.”

Claire snickered and bumped her shoulder into Annabelle’s. Ducking her head down, Annabelle tensed until her own shoulders were up around her ears, and Cotton repeated what Claire had been in the process of explaining.

“Shards make manifest people’s warped desires. They make it impossible to think about anything else, until that desire becomes their whole identity. If the shard stays inside them too long, that’s when the desire warps their very being and turns them into a Corrupted One.”

“Okay,” Annabelle said.

“Corrupted Ones turn back when they’re defeated. They won’t remember being possessed and usually wake up after a few minutes, so you’re gonna want to get out of there pretty fast unless you want to explain everything. Your knives, on the other hand, let you use your desires to fight and to, y’know, do whatever it is you wanna do.”

“Wait, what?”

Again, Claire snickered. “Hah, you really weren’t listening, were ya teach?”

The tip of Cotton’s tail flicked with irritation. “The knives wouldn’t work if you didn’t have a warped desire to feed off of and draw inspiration from. I don’t know what that desire is, but I can sense its presence. There’s no use pretending like it doesn’t exist.”

“Mine is violence,” Claire volunteered cheerfully. Annabelle jerked, and Claire caught her hand in a grip far too gentle for what she’d just admitted. Brown eyes wide and guileless, she hurried to continue, “Aw, I wouldn’t hurt  _ you _ Ms. Baker. I just wanna hurt people in general, but I suppressed it and suppressed it and that’s why my knife works so well. Now I can kill all the creepy ass monsters I want, without actually, y’know,  _ killing _ people.”

“Oh,” Annabelle said. Claire’s hand around hers was very soft, and she couldn’t help but think about that hand other places, trailing up her thigh, between her - “But I don’t see how my knife is meant to help with my, ah, ‘warped desire.’”

“Dunno,” Cotton said oh-so-helpfully. “Guess we’ll find out.”

“Yeah, we’ll find it out together! Don’t worry about it Ms. Baker.”

“Call me Annabelle. We’ll be f-fighting together, after all.”

_ Oh no, oh no, what did I just say? _ But despite the terrified thoughts running in circles around Annabelle’s head, she couldn’t take it back. Not with that blindingly sweet smile on Claire’s face.

“Not in class, though,” she added quickly.

“‘Course not.” Claire nodded. “So, yeah, like I said, Cotton will get us if he sees something.”

“Right. And that, ah, bubble that I made…”

“You make barriers,” Cotton said dismissively. “Dunno how many kinds you can make, but that one you did was pretty comprehensive. Slow the enemy, speed up allies, keep passerby from stumbling in. They affect people's brains to produce the desired results. Claire can make air discs, since the organ her knife goes into is the lungs.”

Although she wasn’t going to demonstrate at the moment, Claire winked at her, and Annabelle figured that was no weirder than anything else she’d seen today.

“How often do these, um, Corrupted Ones show up?”

“Oh, not too often.” Claire finally released her hand to gesticulate vaguely. “I’ve only seen two.”

Annabelle slumped with relief, though she was a bit disappointed as well - by the lack of hand-holding, not the lack of monsters. Her relaxation was short-lived, however, as Cotton hunkered down into a loaf shape and wrapped his tail around his body. “Yeah, you should really go look for that other one again. You actually stand a chance of beating it now.”

Grimacing, Claire said, “Thanks for the reminder dipshit.”

“The monster is still out there?”

“Aw, hey, Ms. - Annabelle. You wanna sit down?”

She  _ was _ swaying a little bit. “It’s not going to attack us suddenly, is it?”

“Nah, it’s keeping its head down. Until Cotton gets his fat ass around to tracking it down again, it’ll probably stay wherever it is.”

“Don’t you have, I don’t know, a way to find them?” Annabelle looked at Cotton with wide, frightened eyes. “How else do you know when to fetch us?”

“Back it  _ up,  _ I don’t have powers like  _ that. _ I just walk around until I see one and then I run for you guys. When I’m in the mood.”

Annabelle pointed out, “That seems kind of haphazard.”

“Yeah, Cotton’s a lazy asshole.” Claire seemed unbothered by the quiet hiss he sent her way.

“I wonder if there’s a way I can…” Annabelle pressed her fingertips to her forehead, and Claire suddenly looked  _ really _ interested.

“Oh, you should try it! Definitely!”

“Wh -  _ Here?” _ They were back in Annabelle’s classroom, and school was out, but a janitor could walk in at any moment. And if there was a blaze of blue light coming out the windows, someone would  _ definitely _ notice.

“Yeah yeah yeah! Please?” Claire stepped so close that Annabelle practically had to cross her eyes and look down her nose. “It’d be really hot.”

Flushing, Annabelle stumbled backwards a step. “O-okay.”

For the second time that day, Annabelle held her new knife in both hands. Her grip on it was white-knuckled, and the hands that had only just stopped shaking were right back at it. She hesitated with the point of the blade pressed to her forehead, so lightly that she could barely feel it. “Are you sure it’s safe to do this so often?”

“Not a problem,” Cotton said. “The knives accelerate healing.”

“It’s really awesome,” Claire agreed dreamily.

One final, huge inhale, and Annabelle  _ slammed _ the blade in. It hurt  _ so much _ worse than before, though she was slightly less distracted by imminent danger this time around. The flash of pain was red-hot, a spike of burning behind her eyes and an ache down her spine so powerful she cried out. But then the light enveloped her the way it was supposed to, and once again her clothing transformed into the outfit it had been.

“Well?” Cotton padded forward on the desk to prod her in the hip. “Can you sense them?”

Though Annabelle tried to focus very hard, she found herself distracted by the way Claire gazed at her - namely, like she was a particularly hot stripper. There was a light flush on the girl’s cheeks, and her chest rose and fell with distractingly deep pants. Her mouth even hung open a bit, and Annabelle wanted to know how much more it would take to make her start drooling.

This time when Cotton prodded her it was with his claws out, and she jerked to the side. “Sorry. Sorry, um, I’ll just,” she shut both her mouth and her eyes.

But no, there was nothing. “Where was the last place Cotton saw the corrupted one?” She might as well try to strategize if her powers wouldn’t cooperate. She was already transformed, after all, and she might not be  _ eager _ for a fight, but she certainly didn’t want one coming at her when she was unprepared.

“Brightsprings park. Off you go then, no time to lose,” Cotton laid down again. “You two can check it out on your own, right?”

“Um,” Annabelle said.

“You betcha!” Claire thrust one hand down her own shirt and, while Annabelle was too busy staring to react, pulled out a pink switchblade. The golden blade came out with a simple flick of her wrist, and then she was stabbing it into her side easy as breathing.

So  _ that _ was where the blood had come from.

Pink light overtook her, but it wasn’t too bright for Annabelle to make out what was happening. Just like with her own transformation, Claire’s clothing melted off her body, and Annabelle wished fervently that her skin would stop glowing too brightly to make out details.

First came pink combat boots with bright gold laces, and then fishnets that shone the same metallic color criss-crossed their way up to her thighs. A bright pink miniskirt barely covered her ass, offering tantalizing glimpses of the panties Annabelle had noticed last time. A cropped leather jacket was next, that same shade as the rest of the leather on her, and on the back there was a golden silhouette of lungs.

Claire looked over her shoulder, flashed a peace sign as fingerless gloves popped into existence, and finally, a hair clip pushed her curly bangs out of the way.

Golden, and outlining the shape of lungs. Of course.

“So cute,” Annabelle whispered between the fingers she hadn’t realized she’d pressed to her lips. Claire winked, and she couldn’t even make herself feel guilty over it.

_ “You’re _ the cute one,” Claire said, pulling the blade out of her body with a wet squelch. “Take my hand, let’s get this show on the road!”

Agreeing without thinking about it was, in hindsight, kind of stupid. Considering the way Claire fought, she really should’ve seen this coming. But somehow she was still surprised when Claire lept straight out the window, exhaling hard on the way, and then  _ jumped again _ . She landed on the school roof two jumps later with a big grin stretching her (glossed) lips.

“Isn’t it cool?” She asked brightly. “Told you I can harden my breath into these discs. Comes in handy in a fight!”

“You d-don’t say,” Annabelle’s voice shook embarrassingly.

Suddenly, Claire stepped closer, and wrapped one surprisingly strong arm around Annabelle’s waist. “Hold onto me,” she whispered. And, oh, she had to be on her tiptoes, because her breath was tracing shivery gusts against Annabelle’s ear. “I won’t let you fall.”

Sure enough, the next time Claire jumped into the air, Annabelle clung to her like a limpet. They made their way the short half-mile to the park mostly through the air, and eventually Annabelle relaxed into the steady rhythm of breathing that Claire was forced to maintain. She detected a faint… crackle, in it, towards the end, but there wasn’t any time to wonder about that.

They hit the leaf litter with only a small stumble, and then Claire was pressing a hand to Annabelle’s lower back. Rather abruptly, Annabelle wished her clothing was as revealing as Claire’s. Even through fabric that gentle touch sent tingles across her skin. “Where do you want to search first?”

“Hm?” Annabelle shook herself out of her thoughts. “Oh, the Corrupted One. It’s…”

A veritable explosion of mulch sprayed in their faces as the ground in front of them erupted.

There was a moment where the two of them stood, silent and frozen, as the Corrupted One oozed its way towards them. It looked vaguely slug-like, secreting a thick fluid that soaked the ground around it and smelled like vinegar. Mouths covered it at odd angles, strangely human but for their lack of lips, and about half of them had tongues lolling out impossibly far. They moved, exposing their creepily huge teeth, and occasionally made moaning sounds.

“Well,” Claire said. “Ready for your first real fight?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: A corrupted one is discovered! The fact that people who like working out are masochists becomes an indisputable fact, as proved by a random writer on the internet!


	3. Befriending a Giant Horror Slug

Claire lept from a tree branch, exhaled a shield which one of the tongues lashed hard against, and landed heel-first on the slug’s body. “Fuck you!” She shouted as she stabbed downwards.

Her foot slipped straight into a mouth, which promptly toothed at it. Another mouth, close to the stab wound, moaned.

Even though she wasn’t nearly as maneuverable as Claire, Annabelle was still supernaturally agile in this form. She jumped high enough to grab Claire’s arm and pull her free of the Corrupted One, and then Claire provided a convenient disc of air for her to grab the edge of and swing away from. The change in their trajectory kept those flailing tongues from catching them; still, Annabelle could feel a large wet spot spread on the back of her leg.

“Careful,” said a bored voice. “Pretty sure that drool is poison, and you two have open wounds.”

Whipping her head towards the newcomer, Claire called, “You lazy dick! What took so long?”

Cotton the cat sat in a little hollow between two tree roots, and seemed unconcerned at the saliva/goo mixture getting flung in droplets around him.  _ “I  _ can’t fly. Also, duck.”

Annabelle obeyed without thinking, but the tongue caught Claire by the waist and wrapped firmly around her. It lifted her in the air, the relevant mouth groaning hungry sounds, and Annabelle had a moment of panicked fury that she didn’t have a weapon to defend Claire with.

Of course, Claire didn’t need it. Her switchblade sliced cleanly through the tongue, severing the long rope of muscle and sending it flailing to the ground. She had a single moment to look up, pleased, and meet Annabelle’s eyes. Her brow furrowed as she saw Annabelle standing with outstretched arms, another soap-bubble shine rushing towards her.

What she didn’t see was the Corrupted One she’d just injured, opening its mouths wide all at once. But Annabelle saw, and even though she didn’t know quite what it was about to do, she knew it would be bad news.

At the same moment that the smaller bubble enveloped Claire, the Corrupted One screamed. The sound was so loud that Annabelle could do nothing but double over and cover her ears with both hands. Blood soaked down her forearms in seconds.

When she looked up, she had to squint through the tears streaming from her eyes. She saw Claire, not inside a bubble as she’d expected, but instead wearing it like a sort of translucent  _ skin _ from which only her hands stuck out. Already, Annabelle could feel the strain pounding like a headache through her veins, and knew she wouldn’t be able to keep up that sort of defence for long.

Thankfully, she wouldn’t have to. Claire was hacking away at the spongy flesh of the thing, and had finally cut deep enough at one point to let a thick, syrupy blood come out. The creature’s teeth were gnashing, and though Annabelle’s ears rang too loudly for her to know for certain, she thought it was done screaming.

The shield popped, a clean, light shower of liquid eating away at the disgusting ooze covering the ground. Claire flipped in the air, her momentum carrying the knife through the roof of one of the mouths, and the monster abruptly dissolved. Unlike the last one, which had been one of Claire’s classmates judging by the uniform (grey pleated skirt, black blazer, white collared shirt and a grey tie), this was clearly an adult _. _

Sitting on the ground was a woman, clearly dazed but not unconscious. Her curly red hair was pulled into a very messy bun high on her head, and she wore badly ripped workout clothing.

Both Claire and Annabelle were frozen, unsure how to explain what was going on. No one said anything until the bubble still surrounding all three popped like Claire’s shield had.

_ “Wow,” _ said the former monster.

“We can totally explain,” Claire started. She was cut off by her magical transformation, which left her standing in her school clothes and smiling sheepishly. “Okay, I can’t explain.”

Annabelle started as her body pushed the knife out and onto the dirt, her stomach sloshing dangerously with the movement. “This is all, um, a bad dream?” She tried.

“Ha!” The woman stood up suddenly, windmilled her arms to keep herself upright, and gave the two of them a wild-eyed look. “I’ve had dreams before, honey, and  _ none _ of them are like this!”

“Guess the cat’s out of the bag,” Cotton said wryly.

She looked at him, the whites of her eyes huge in her dark-skinned face, and laughed that loud, staccato laugh again.  _ “Ha!” _

Cotton’s ears went back and his eyes slitted. “Someone tell her to keep it down.”

“Keep it down?  _ Keep it down!”  _ She wheeled towards Annabelle, who became very abruptly aware that the woman was well over six feet tall and all lean muscle. “You! You’re my neighbor, aren’t you?”

“Am I?” Annabelle stumbled backwards, and found Claire’s hand already out to support her.

“I see you go off to work every morning when I’m about to go to bed,” she nodded to herself. “Tell me what’s happening.”

Instead of Annabelle answering, Cotton’s voice came from the direction of their feet. “Oi, introduce yourself. It’s only polite.”

“Of course, of course, why didn’t I think of that.” She raked a hand through her hair, mussing it further. “I’m Sonia. You two are…?”

“Claire, nice to meet ya.”

“Annabelle. Um, Annabelle Baker.”

“I’m Cotton. You’re a weird one.”

Sonia said, “Thanks!” at the same moment Annabelle said, “Sorry?”

Rather than explain, Cotton asked, “What’s the last thing you remember?”

“Oh, well I was walking home from the bar, and I stumbled. I thought I caught myself wrong, because the heel of my hand hurt really badly, but then,” Sonia frowned. “Ugh, it’s all blurry. I know I wasn’t  _ that _ drunk. Did someone slip me something? Oh god, am I hallucinating?”

At that, Claire burst out laughing, the cutest giggle-snort Annabelle had ever heard. A scrabbling sound behind her had Annabelle turning to see Cotton climbing a tree (poorly). “I’m not explaining everything _ again,” _ he huffed when he made it to the lowest branch. “In fact, I’m going to sleep, and none of you are going to bother me for the rest of the day.”

Which left Claire and Annabelle to try to tell Sonia the craziness she’d stumbled into. Really, Claire was the one explaining, because Annabelle was tired and shocky and kind of in denial about how much had happened today. At the end of it all, Sonia gave Claire a speculative look, much more grounded now than she had been when she’d first come out of the Corrupted One.

“So, where’s my shard then?”

“Uh oh.” Claire abruptly dropped to her knees in the leaf litter to search. Annabelle followed suit, even though Sonia’s gaze made her feel self conscious. But, in the end, they couldn’t find it.

Unabashed about the mud now staining her hands and knees, Claire stood up and shrugged. “Well, I could transform for you again if you really need convincing, but three times in one day is kinda tiring.”

“No, I think I get it honey,” Sonia said. “I only have one more question.”

“Yeah?”

“Can I get a knife too?”

Shocked, Annabelle looked up from attempting to clean her skirt. She found Sonia’s eyes shining with enthusiasm, very nearly manic, and a strand of saliva slid down her chin. She looked - a bit like Claire had looked, seeing Annabelle enact violence on herself. A bit like a drug addict looking for a fix. Annabelle remembered what Cotton said about  _ warped desires. _

In the middle of Claire trying to talk Sonia out of it, “No, we don’t need any more help really, also it’s like super fucking dangerous,” Annabelle cut in.

“I think you could.”

Eyebrows up, Claire turned to her with a palms-out  _ I-give-up _ gesture. Annabelle swallowed, and continued, “Not right now, though. Cotton’s the one who gives out knives, and he won’t help you if you bother him while he’s trying to sleep.”

“Cat nap,” Claire corrected with a grin.

“Oh, okay,” Sonia sounded disappointed. “I’ll - I’ll check in at your house tomorrow, okay? I need to get cleaned up, wow darlings, why didn’t you tell me I’m such a mess?”

Her tittering covered Claire’s snort nicely.

As Sonia wandered off, Annabelle shouted after her, “Don’t you need help getting home?”

Again Sonia laughed, and she didn’t bother turning around as she called back. “I’ve found my way home from way weirder places and in way worse shape. Won’t be a problem!”

Together they watched her disappear into the trees. “What do you think the odds are of us actually seeing her again?” Claire asked.

“I don’t know,” Annabelle admitted. “I honestly didn’t think through what I said.”

“Yeah, that was sorta obvious,” Claire bumped their hips together. “It was cute though.”

Blushing red-hot, Annabelle said, “So what happens now?”

“Whatever you want,” Claire said. Annabelle looked at her, and could feel the truth of those words. She could demand they finish the school-related meeting they’d intended to have today. She could ask Claire if they could go looking for more Corrupted Ones to fight. But she remembered what Claire’d said about transforming so many times, and she herself didn’t want to have to think about  _ work _ when the world as she knew it had just turned upside down.

“Let’s go home,” Annabelle said. It was worth it for the relieved smile on Claire’s face, for the way they walked shoulder-to-shoulder until they reached the road, for the kiss Claire blew to her as they parted ways. There would be plenty of time to spend with Claire tomorrow, and from now on in general, even outside of school. After all, as Claire had said, they were some kind of magical fighting team now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Something kind of gay occurs, but not nearly enough for anyone's tastes, and Sonia makes a power move. An author self-insert consumes themself in a fit of pique, totally, this definitely happens.


	4. Calling Out a Total Pedo

“I know what your warped desire is.”

Her head snapped upwards so fast her neck cracked. She winced, rolled her shoulders, and then said, “I’m sorry?” In a voice she pretended wasn’t quavering.

“Don’t worry,” Claire said, walking into the classroom. It was tuesday, four days after the craziness that had been Annabelle getting her powers. Everything had been so quiet since then, she’d almost believed it was some kind of fever dream (except that she still had her knife and Claire winked at her in class sometimes). “It doesn’t bother me.”

“I d-don’t know what you’re talking about,” Annabelle lied.

Claire leaned down to whisper in Annabelle’s ear, and it took quite a bit of willpower for Annabelle to not try to look down her shirt. “You wanna fuck me.”

“N-no!” Annabelle jumped up from her seat so fast it went spinning backwards and she nearly banged her head into Claire’s. “I, um, this is a misunderstanding, I just - ”

_ “Annabelle,”  _ Claire said. It was the first time since that friday she’d used Annabelle’s first name, and it shut her up immediately. “I’m totally up for it if you are.”

“But I’m  _ not,” _ Annabelle insisted. “I  _ don’t.” _

They had a strange sort of standoff, Claire looking up at her and seeing too much, Annabelle looking at her own shoes with a mile-long stare. “I’m your teacher,” she said eventually, by way of explanation. “Claire, you may be - old enough to be interested in that sort of, of relationship, but. The two of us will never be equals, certainly not while you’re still in school. It would be utterly morally  _ bankrupt _ of me to take advantage of you.”

“Who says  _ I’m _ not taking advantage of  _ you?” _ Claire tried to purr it, tried to flutter her eyelashes as she spoke, and it only made her look younger.

“Everyone. Psychologists. Ethicists. Me.”

“Stop with the fancy words,” Claire said. She sounded… less flirty, now, more firm, and it made Annabelle ache to sink to her knees and give in. “You can’t learn about something like this in a book or a study.”

_ “Yes, _ you c - ”

“We fight monsters!” Claire burst out. “We fight monsters and I dream of ripping you to shreds!”

She just sort of stumbled into the chair Annabelle had vacated, not meeting her teacher’s eyes anymore. “I’ve been thinking about it ever since I got these powers. But even before that, I wanted to  _ cut you up. _ You’re so pretty, Ms. Baker, and everyone looks prettier all bloody. I wanna see what your organs are like, especially that brain of yours, you’re so smart I’m sure it has to look different. I wanna hear what sounds you’d make when you’re in way more pain than you can handle.”

“Oh,” said Annabelle.

_ “Oh _ is right,” Claire agreed wryly. “And… I can have that, now. Maybe not, y’know, the whole nine yards, but these powers have given me the chance to see how beautiful you are when you’re fighting.” She looked up, eyes shining, like Annabelle were some angel and not a lecherous twenty nine year old. “And if I can have something I never thought was possible, why can’t you?”

“Because… because…” Annabelle swallowed heavily. There  _ were _ plenty of good reasons. But in the face of what Claire had said, they all seemed to melt away.

If they were living in a world where monsters and magic were real, where Annabelle could survive stabbing herself in the forehead twice, then why shouldn’t she risk this? Sure, if real-world rules decided to apply here where they hadn’t applied in a while, then she would be screwed. And so would Claire, she reminded herself, be thoroughly fucked up for most future relationships. But if this strange new world was so bent on making their dreams come true, well.

Why refuse?

Annabelle opened her mouth to express that, only to have someone climb in through the window she’d cracked open for airflow.

“Hey honey,” giggled Sonia. “Miss me? Sorry I didn’t visit sooner, I was kinda busy cleaning my house. You would not  _ believe _ the mess I built up while that shard was controlling me.”

_ “Whaaaaaaat,”  _ Claire drew the word out for maximum effect. Annabelle, on the other hand, was too busy trying to covertly cover her nose; Sonia smelled rather strongly of whiskey.

“So, yeah,” Sonia stood up as though she hadn’t just clambered into a school building. “Do you two know where Cotton is? I wanted to ask about getting a knife.”

“Nah, sorry,” Claire said.

“Actually, does he disappear like this often?” Annabelle asked. “I’m starting to feel like we should maybe go looking for him. Or at least look for Corrupted Ones without him.”

“I’m pretty new to this too, y’know,” Claire was frowning now. “I don’t have all the answers.”

“If you two do go, I could come with you, right?” Sonia barrelled ahead, seemingly not noticing the tension between Claire and Annabelle at all. “I won’t get in the way, promise. I just… wanna be close to the fight.”

Was it Annabelle’s imagination, or was Sonia panting? “You, um, could come, I suppose? I do wonder though,” here Annabelle paused, wondering if the question was too personal. But Sonia  _ did _ want to risk her life with them, after all, and she supposed it couldn’t be worse than what she and Claire had been talking about. “What  _ is _ your warped desire? You seem very sure that you have one you can use with a knife.”

“That’s easy,” Sonia said. “It’s pain.”

Claire and Annabelle both made inarticulate surprised sounds, but Sonia was elaborating before Annabelle could even think through what that might mean for Claire. “I just love self destruction, y’know? I love the burn of alcohol going down and coming up and,” here she sighed dreamily. “I like the idea of rotting my body from the inside out, but I don’t want to have to stop if I go too far, y’know? Those knives sound wonderful. All the fights I can dream of, and I don’t even have to worry about getting hurt!”

“Well, we can still die,” Annabelle said.

“But fuck yeah, it’s fun to indulge in the violence isn’t it?” Claire finished with a toothy grin.

Heart  _ squeezing _ in her chest, Annabelle nodded meekly. Claire was so attractive like that, fantasizing about something she loved so much. And yet she’d probably be a better match for Sonia, who may have been an adult but certainly didn’t have as much power over her as Annabelle did.

Then again, looking at her drunkenly swaying in place, Annabelle was probably a better choice regardless. She just hoped Claire still wanted her after this revelation.

Catching Annabelle’s gaze, Claire gestured subtly to Sonia and rolled her eyes. Annabelle smiled. She probably hadn’t blown her chance just yet.

And since she was in such a good mood, it didn’t take much for Sonia to beg her into activating her powers once more. She’d forgotten the pain, and it turned her stomach, but Claire’s obvious joy soothed her immensely. They decided to head toward the richer side of town, by merit of not having been near there in a while. If Corrupted Ones were wandering around by the school, or in their neighborhoods, they would’ve noticed.

“We might as well check it out, even if there turns out to be jack shit,” Claire said cheerfully.

Then she transformed too, and off they went on another adventure. Annabelle found herself clinging to a shrieking Sonia, who deafeningly declared this, “The best roller coaster  _ ever,” _ while Claire had both arms wrapped around her waist. Even though Claire’s arms were thin, and hadn’t fully grown to an adult’s size yet, they were secure and easy to relax into. Annabelle felt, as cold air rushed past her, that this fantasy world might not be too bad after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Claire and Annabelle get wet and messy together. No one discusses their feelings well, especially not that omnipresent author self-insert, who proceeds to beg for comments.


	5. Indulging a Total Pedo

Claire and Annabelle were both doubled-over laughing at Sonia. Annabelle would’ve felt a bit bad about it, but Sonia seemed too preoccupied with trying to stand up straight. Between her tipsiness and the muddy ground, it wasn’t working too well.

Mud flung out when she landed flat on her back again, and Cotton hissed as a healthy portion of it splattered him. “I don’t know why I ever spend time with you three,” he said belligerently. “You’re all complete monsters.”

“Aw, you know you love us,” Claire said between snorts. Annabelle  _ loved _ the way she laughed when she was truly amused, all unrefined and precious.

“Yes, of course.  _ Blagh, _ this Pepsi™ mud tastes awful.”

“I could always give you a bath, if you’d like,” Annabelle offered.

Cotton hissed again, and Claire was holding her stomach in laughter once more. Annabelle felt rather proud of it, right up until Claire said, wiping the tears out of her eyes, “Man, I really need a bath too. Your house is near here, right Annabelle?”

“Er, sorry?”

“Oh yeah,” Sonia cut in. “I’ll lead the way.”

“You can’t shower at my house!” Annabelle sounded more scandalized than she’d meant to.

“I’m not gonna,” Sonia said with a wink. “I’ll leave you lovebirds to it.”

Spluttering, Annabelle was left behind as a muddy magical girl, alcoholic, and cat trooped out of the woods. To add insult to injury, she moved to follow them and slipped herself, which left both her legs coated in sticky muck. “Well,  _ damn,”  _ she muttered.

Sonia bailed as they approached Annabelle’s small home, heading for her own considerably more rickety porch. Annabelle used to think the house next to hers was abandoned, actually, before she’d “befriended” Sonia. Claire waited patiently for her to unlock the door, seemingly unbothered by the bright blush on her cheeks.

“Leave your shoes out here, please,” Annabelle said. She didn’t know what else she  _ could _ say.

As she entered Annabelle’s home, Claire looked around with interest. The lacy old-lady curtains, the tea set sitting on a scarred coffee table, the ratty couch Annabelle loved because it was polka-dotted. “So much blue,” she mused.

“It’s my favorite color,” Annabelle admitted. “Which I suppose is a happy coincidence.”

“It suits you,” Claire agreed. “Where’s your bathroom?”

“F-follow me.”

Trying her best  _ not _ to look like a lovesick fool, Annabelle headed down the short hallway to the dark panelled room. Claire stepped through the doorway, but didn’t move to close the door yet. She was giving Annabelle a speculative look, one which gave Annabelle goosebumps.

“That Corrupted One sure was something, huh?”

“I suppose so. I don’t know w-what kind of desire causes someone to spray Pepsi™ like a fire hose.”

“Yeah,” Claire agreed. “Weird.”

And then she reached up and crooked her index finger, just once. Beckoning. Who was Annabelle to refuse?

The moment she leaned down Claire had her lips caught in a harsh kiss. It was unpracticed, but enthusiastic, and  _ oh _ did Claire  _ know _ what she wanted. She bit Annabelle’s mouth, knotted both hands in her hair to keep her head angled exactly where Claire needed it. Her scalp ached, her lips stung, and she whimpered when Claire pulled her into the bathroom and kicked the door shut with one nimble foot.

She backed Annabelle into the door, probably smeared mud all over it, but Annabelle was too focused on the way she now had to hold onto Claire’s shoulders for dear life. She was lightheaded, not enough air and too long kissing after the dry spell she’d been suffering. She wasn’t about to complain, though, especially when Claire slipped a thigh between her wobbly legs and grinned against her mouth.

“Two weeks,” she panted. “Two weeks was way too fuckin’ long to wait.”

“Mhmm,” Annabelle whimpered. Why had she wanted to take things slow, again?

All thoughts fled her mind as Claire released her hair to grope at her chest instead. Claire’s hands were too small to wrap around her breasts, flesh spilling between each finger. She massaged roughly and Annabelle whimpered louder, glad she’d worn a thin bra today. “Ha, you make me look flat,” Claire said breathlessly. Annabelle wanted to laugh, but couldn’t do much more than lean her head against Claire’s shoulder and shake.

Her back kind of hurt from hunching, and her legs wobbled as she tried to keep herself from resting  _ all _ her weight on the smaller girl. Already, she could feel her hips moving without her permission, grinding in little circles on Claire’s thigh.

“Wait, wait,” Annabelle pushed weakly at Claire’s shoulders. “This is - too much.”

Claire, who was biting her neck harshly now, didn’t respond for a long moment. They weren’t even sucking love bites, designed to mark. They were just deep and aching and they  _ hurt, _ oh they hurt, Annabelle hoped they bruised black and blue and took an hour to cover with makeup. By the time Claire pulled away to answer Annabelle’s statement, she’d almost forgotten what she’d said herself.

“I can, ah, take a shower. Give us both a chance to cool down.”

“Maybe, yeah,” Annabelle agreed. Neither moved away for a long moment.

“In a minute - ”

“Yes, yes.”

And they were right back to kissing like a pair of horny teenagers. This time around Claire was unbuttoning her shirt, and Annabelle had a moment where her stomach flipped over.  _ This was wrong, _ her mind was insisting.  _ You’re getting off to the thought of this actual teenager, and would you have stopped if she was even younger? You degenerate, disgusting woman. _

“Fuck, I wanna take you apart,” Claire moaned. “Annabelle, so hot, I wanna make a mess of you.” A mental image of Claire sitting on her face, covering her in juices all down her chin, had Annabelle’s hips bucking. “Wanna put my hands in your guts and get blood _ everywhere.” _

Again Annabelle pushed away, this time more forcefully. They were both breathing so hard, Annabelle hurting in half a dozen places, and it took her mind a moment to catch up to what had happened. The thought of what Claire wanted was viscerally scary, and already Claire’s eyes were shadowed with doubt.

Doubt, so much like what preyed on Annabelle’s mind the more turned on she got. “I… maybe we could do it,” she said impulsively. Claire’s eyes lit up, and Annabelle hurried to continue, “If we have extra time with our powers after a battle sometime, or, I don’t know, I - c-can’t plan this out, but. I know I want to s-sleep with you, and. I want to try. It.”

“Oh, Annabelle.” Claire wrapped her up in a hug, only halfway chaste due to the way her shirt still hung open and exposed her white bra. “Thank you.”

“No, it’s not a f-favor, it’s - ” Annabelle swallowed and shut her mouth. She couldn’t really explain it. “We might not be p-properly dating, but I. Want to give you a present.”

“We could date,” Claire offered. “If you wanted.”

All of the blood in Annabelle’s body migrated back up from between her legs to fill her cheeks. Her face felt fit to burst into flames. “Get in the shower, already.”

Laughing, Claire did, leaving Annabelle to hurriedly vacate the room before Claire could strip down right before her eyes. She rested her back against the wall and took deep breaths. She also needed a long, preferably  _ cold, _ shower. But first she had to run to her room and change out of her mucky clothing, in addition to grabbing a clean set for Claire.

She initially grabbed a normal pajama shirt and pants, but realized as she went to set it in front of the door that the white fabric of the top would cling to Claire’s wet body, and the size difference… she was blushing all over again, and went back to grab a sweatshirt instead.

It was hours later before Claire left. They spent a long time simply sipping tea and talking at Annabelle’s kitchen table. Both with wet hair and comfortable clothing, Claire’s curls weighted by the water until they were nearly straight. Of course, some of the conversation was about the Corrupted Ones or Cotton or Sonia, but most of it was simply… talking. Their taste in music (they’d both listened to and liked the Heathers musical) and their weekend plans and whether it might be disrespectful to bring snacks when they patrolled for shards.

Eventually, of course, it had to end. But in the buttery-warm light of the kitchen, time seemed to stand still, and Annabelle almost didn’t notice when Claire reached out to capture her hand.

“I should be getting back to my parents’ place,” she said, letting go of Annabelle after a long moment. The air felt entirely too cold on her fingers.

This problem, of course, was easily solved. But not until Annabelle had walked Claire to the door, and not until Claire had stolen one last kiss from her and disappeared into the dark night. Annabelle debated asking to walk her home, but quite apart from  _ that _ looking bad, Claire didn’t need her protection. Not from mundane threats, anyway.

So Annabelle was free, at last, to retreat into the fluffy feather comforter on her bed. She wrapped herself up almost too tightly to do much more than wiggle. Not quite so tight, however, that she couldn’t slip one hand beneath her nightgown and up, against the soft, cotton panties she’d put on. She found herself already a bit damp there, and bit her bottom lip.

Yes, her fingers would be plenty warm in moments. And she would be patient, would wait to fuck Claire, if Claire could wait to hurt her.

They were still being responsible. Sort of. Sometimes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Claire makes scrambled eggs, and everyone shanks a dickhead. Strange events occur outside the scope of the story, leading to some esoteric edits.


	6. Finding the Fetish Capital of America

Blinking, Annabelle tried to make sense of the sight in front of her. “Who are  _ they?” _ Claire asked, surprisingly annoyed.

The - boys? - looked vaguely familiar, but it was hard to place them. Of course, it would be hard to place anyone when they were engaged in battling a Corrupted One, especially something as large and weirdly lumpy as this. Each one lit with flashes of fire occasionally, and Annabelle had to squint through the blaze to make them out.

Yes, her first instinct had been correct. They had rabbit ears and tails as part of their magical girl, er,  _ boy _ outfits. She had a moment to think that was sort of fetishistic before she remembered Claire’s panties and decided  _ that _ was hypocritical.

“Those are the Dampierre twins. Why should I have told you about them?”

“Uh, maybe because weird shit’s been happening on this side of town for like a month, and we kept wasting our time investigating it?”

Finally, one of them thrusted his sword into the thing, and it dissolved into nothingness. They both landed on the street in front of three bemused girls and a very bored cat, and watched the group. One ducked down to grab a shard, then tossed it nonchalantly at Cotton - the cat lept nearly three feet into the air to catch it in his mouth, where it disappeared with a dark glow like a black light.

Except for their clothes, they were identical. White-blonde hair that fell in waves to their chins, dark grey eyes watching (one set curious, one wary). The outfits themselves were the same in form, but one had a palette of bright yellow and white, and the other was smoky black and red.

Though they were both in heeled, lace-up shoes, they were clearly shorter than even Claire. The shoes were monochrome in the respective shades, with matching knee-high socks tucked neatly into them. Above those were sock garters, and then brightly colored shorts that Annabelle at first thought were printed with an ornate and subtle kidney bean pattern, before she remembered the organ theming and shuddered at the thought of  _ actual _ kidneys.

On the top half they wore long sleeved button-ups that matched the shoes/socks/garters, and double breasted vests that matched the shorts. Tiny crowns completed the look, and long, thin sheathes into which they’d put their ornate rapiers. Were those their blades? How were they meant to hide  _ that? _

“Hello,” said black-red-and-wary. “I’m Merlin. This is my brother Felix. I see you have powers, too.”

Sonia, who didn’t actually have powers yet, pouted and glared at Cotton. “So he didn’t tell you guys about each other? At all?”

“I don’t work for you,” he said petulantly, like a real cat.

“We’re Annabelle and Claire,” Annabelle explained. “And that’s Sonia. Have you two been at this long?”

“Yeah, a couple months!” Felix piped up from behind his twin.

“Hey, you’re more experienced than me,” Claire said brightly. “Wanna trade some tips and tricks? We could totally team up - ”

“We work together,” Merlin interrupted. “We don’t need anyone else.”

Annabelle sort of expected Felix to protest that, since he’d been smiling and generally friendlier looking, but he did nothing of the sort. Just watched his brother’s back with a look that, er.

She may have an idea of his warped desire. Oh  _ dear. _

A tingle in her skewered brain had her attention turning elsewhere in a moment. Cotton also tilted his nose towards the wind, then said sardonically, “You might not have a choice about that in a minute.”

“What?” Claire said.

Another Corrupted One burst around the corner. Annabelle wasted no time in clapping her hands and putting up a barrier, since they were in a neighborhood (a fairly wealthy one at that, probably where the Dampierres themselves lived) and she didn’t want to risk anyone stumbling upon their fight.

More so than the other ones, this creature was… unnerving. It had an eel tail which stretched at least a dozen feet behind it and whose fins gleamed dangerously at the edges like knives. No arms, but an otherwise human torso with huge, swinging breasts, and arching up from its tail to rest a gleaming tip at its collarbone was what Annabelle could only describe as a dick.

Merlin flushed so brightly red that, even out of the corner of her eye, Annabelle noticed it. The sight was both embarrassing and shocking, to be fair, but her head was so deeply unsettling Annabelle couldn’t find eroticism in it. A mouth that stretched far too high and was filled with far too many long, sharp teeth. Hair that hung long and thick obscured its eyes, but when it tilted its head, Annabelle saw that they appeared to be fused shut anyway.

The Corrupted One paused, tilted its head, and then whipped its tail out from behind. Merlin would’ve been cleaved in half if Felix hadn’t lept in front of him, his blade unsheathed in an instant. A shield of flame arced out from its tip into an oval in front of them, which intercepted the tail. The Corrupted One wailed even as Felix was thrown off his feet and into the air.

Claire was there to catch him in an instant. “Fight!” She shouted at Merlin, and  _ finally _ he moved.

His sword, when he unsheathed it, shot what looked like darts of fire. He fought mostly at a long range, sufficiently keeping the creature distracted but not badly damaging it.

That long tail was both terrifyingly dangerous and a big, vulnerable target. Annabelle tried, on a whim, to send her hands outwards towards it and create some kind of barrier to cut into it. No dice. She seemed to be a defensive fighter only, and that  _ wasn’t going to be enough. _

Luckily, she’d planned for this. Pulling the kitchen knife out of the waistband of her skirt, Annabelle called out, “Claire, now!”

Without missing a beat, Claire turned and breathed a platform into the air. Annabelle ran for it, used it as a springboard, and thrust her knife at the Corrupted One’s shoulder.

The blade sank a few inches deep before breaking off. Annabelle had to duck out of the way midair to avoid the snap of those nightmare teeth, and bitterly wished she had a power like Felix’s. Defence and offence combined would be nice right about now.

Speaking of Felix, he was back on his feet and  pressing at the creature’s, er, weak spot. Taking advantage of the reach his sword gave him, he could press his shield against the base of it.

Perhaps predictably, the creature screamed when it felt that scalding heat against its cock. It  _ flipped,  _ foot after foot of body rolling away, _ right towards Sonia. _

Anyone else would have dodged. Sonia didn’t, and Annabelle wondered if it was the desire for pain - even  _ life ending _ pain - or if she thought Cotton would intervene and save her.

Either way, Annabelle couldn’t let her die.

That same barrier which had once covered Claire’s skin covered hers then (it wouldn’t work for Sonia, a non-magical girl). She charged forward, straight into the creature’s unprotected back.

It felt like ramming into a brick wall, but it worked. The Corrupted One got pushed off-balance and Claire caught Annabelle before she could fall to the spiky fins below. Or, no,  _ not _ Claire.  _ Merlin.  _ He even sent a parting bolt of fire at it to make sure it didn’t try to retaliate.

“Now we’re even,” he said as they landed. Annabelle nodded.

Both Claire and Felix turned back to the fight after ascertaining that their respective partners were okay. Already the Corrupted One was rearing back, its tail thrashing side to side in search of prey. It was bleeding, from the shoulder and from a slice Claire had left near its hip, and it had burns in splotchy patches.

Yet it didn’t seem particularly bothered by any of those wounds. In fact, it  _ laughed,  _ a high cackle that set her hair on end.

“Why’s it so powerful?” Annabelle said aloud. To herself, since Merlin had joined the fray again.

“I don’t know,” Cotton said, making her jump. “Abnormally big shard, maybe?”

Watching helplessly, Annabelle could do nothing as the damn thing changed targets again and again. She let her shield pop, hoping that she’d be able to cast it on one of her comrades if the Corrupted One actually settled on attacking one seriously, but it  _ didn’t. _ It seemed to be trying to limit their movements, in fact, rather than kill them.

It lurched left, towards Merlin. Felix yelled incoherently and dismissed his shield, slamming his blade into its tail. He’d used a slicing motion instead of a thrusting one, so it wasn’t hurt, and sparks flew off of the point where he clashed with its fin.

A drip of fluid came down the side of the dick. Annabelle swallowed down bile.

Closer to Merlin, now, and he sent fire directly at where the eyes should’ve been. The smell of burnt hair filled the air, and its mouth stretched impossibly wider in a grin.

Felix finally thrust, and went straight through from one end of the tail to the other. For the second time that fight, the Corrupted One flailed and sent Felix into the air.

Though he was already righting himself, Claire lept to help him. While Annabelle was watching frantically, (fearing Claire wouldn’t land safely and knowing that she probably  _ would) _ that head turned. The jaw opened nearly 180 degrees, and its mouth closed around her upper arm.

Now it was  _ Annabelle’s _ turn to scream.

Her barrier couldn’t wrap protectively around even  _ her _ if the monster was already inside it. She thrashed weakly in its grip _.  _ Sonia shouted, and she didn’t hear it.

Corrupted One dropped her, leaving her lying on the ground, winded and clutching at her bleeding wound. It was already closing up, but still hurt  _ so badly. _ The initial gash was a huge, burning mass deep into her muscles, and it radiated a terrible ache all down her arm and across her left side. The pain was a significant distraction, so it took her moments too long to realize another horrifying thought - that the monster was lining up the cock as if to thrust into her, and that  _ bulges _ were moving through it.  _ Eggs. _

It didn’t look much like a normal phallus, this close. It was the same grey-green as the rest of the skin, but slightly transparent. The head looked like nothing so much as a stubbly sea anemone, with its little tentacles all wrapped into a tight spiral. She had a feeling that would open up to let the eggs pass if it got inside her.

Panic shredding her judgement, Annabelle could think of only one way out of the situation. Aiming for the chest, she just fucking  _ headbutted _ it.

There was a flash of, of something  _ alien, _ of a  _ want it hate it need it. Make the girl mine, mine like that time in the dark, never enough to get the sensation off and never helpless again yet limbs so limp. Humping a pillow, don’t look in the mirror naked, don’t - _

Gasping, she pulled back in time to hear Sonia say, “- gonna give me powers, now’s the time.”

“What the everloving hell was that?” Merlin said, blocking out whatever response Cotton may have given.

Above them, the Corrupted One was rolling its head wildly on its neck like it was having a seizure. Down much closer to the ground, Annabelle rolled over and threw up.

Claire wasted no time in bisecting the dick with her switchblade. Blood spouted out of it like a fountain, profuse and red and terrifyingly human, and the Corrupted One shrieked louder than ever (still nowhere near Sonia’s volume) even as it dissolved away.

Thank all the gods ever conceived that the woman was unconscious when her corrupted form disappeared, because Annabelle had absolutely no idea what she’d say to her if she wasn’t. Claire went to her immediately, trusting the boys to take care of retrieving the shard.

“Are you okay?” She asked, rubbing Annabelle’s back gently.

She wiped the back of her hand over her mouth and gave Claire a wobbly smile. “I didn’t know I could do that.”

“Neither did I,” Cotton said as he trotted up to them.

“Don’t ignore me!” Sonia insisted furiously.

He ignored her and continued with, “It’s an interesting power. What was the Corrupted One’s mind like?”

“It’s… visceral,” Annabelle said reluctantly. “And fixated. It was horrible.”

“Maybe we shouldn’t do that again,” Claire said. “You had me worried.”

“Yeah, sounds good,” Annabelle agreed. And then she blushed, because Claire had taken advantage of the fact that she still had her hands on her knees and kissed first her forehead, then her lips.

“Oh, get a room,” Cotton said.

When Annabelle looked up the boys were  _ watching _ them, and she sighed. The battle was over, but in all likelihood another was just around the corner.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Claire and Annabelle prove that it's very easy to end up in the author's predicament, though they do it in a significantly more... recreational way!


	7. Winning the Procrastination Olympics

“Now, the book doesn’t say it, but in this scene Benedick and Beatrice are typically blocked to - Claire, are you listening?”

“Sorry, Ms. Baker,” she said. “But having you in my room is  _ really _ distracting.”

“I only agreed to come here because you said we were  _ just _ studying.” Annabelle fought down a blush and, with some difficulty, held up her copy of Shakespeare’s Complete Works. “You need to do better this unit, and besides, you said your parents would be home in - ”

“That was a lie,” Claire admitted shamelessly. “They’re out of town on a business meeting.”

This time Annabelle couldn’t stop herself from flushing. _ “Claire.” _

_ “Annabelle,” _ Claire said back, mocking her exasperated tone. Then she smiled. “What if we don’t do anything above a PG-13 rating?”

“What does  _ that _ mean?” Still, she could feel herself giving in. Her arms sagged until the book rested on the light wood of Claire’s desk again.

“Y’know, a little kissing,” Claire leaned forward as if she was going to demonstrate. “Clothes stay on. Maybe some… light violence?”

“Oh?” Annabelle saw the way Claire was biting her bottom lip, the way she refused to look away, brown eyes to blue, and felt the last of her resistance melt in a warm wash. “Do you want me to transform? I haven’t yet today.”

“You brought your blade?” Claire smiled blindingly bright. “Would you? Please?”

Nodding, Annabelle drew it out of her over-large, black purse, and did just that. It still hurt, of course, but it was familiar now, and if anything she hoped it had been increasing her pain tolerance to allow Claire more freedom. She wondered why she didn’t feel more nervous about this. A strange peace had come over her.

Claire stood on tiptoes to kiss her, and Annabelle decided not to question it too much. Courage was a fleeting thing, for her, and she would do her best to enjoy it while it lasted. Which meant kissing back, enjoying the way Claire seemed to refuse to learn how to  _ actually _ kiss. Annabelle knew she hadn’t been Claire’s first, and wondered if the teen had been this rough with all of them. She found herself hoping so.

_ I’m the only one who’ll accept all of you,  _ she thought, and then faltered. Had that been  _ her _ thought? It was so strangely possessive.

Apparently Claire took this as a cue to stop biting at Annabelle’s lips and fall back to the flats of her feet. “So? What do you want to do?”

Tentatively, Annabelle said, “I like kissing.”

The look Claire gave Annabelle was unbearably fond. “Wanna sit somewhere more comfortable, then? I promise I’m not just trying to get you into my bed.”

Annabelle smiled shyly and nodded. They did sit on Claire’s bed, but it was really the practical place to be - and besides, Annabelle thought the black sheets printed with spider webs suited Claire perfectly. Their kisses were, while not gentle nor chaste, at least more sedate than they had been.

Eventually Claire pulled away a bit, one hand kneading at Annabelle’s scalp in a way that had the teacher shivering. “You looked really hot in that last fight, by the way.”

“Ah, with the - the egg monster?” Annabelle forced her eyes open enough to see Claire’s face. It was worth it; the flush on her cheeks was thick and beautiful as oil paints. Like if Annabelle touched it she would smudge it. “You liked seeing me covered in blood, didn’t you.”

“Mhmm,” Claire admitted. “And fighting too. You’re a badass.”

“So are you,” Annabelle said. She reached up, hands shaking slightly, from the bed. When her fingertips met Claire’s belly and felt only the solid resistance of muscle, though, she lost whatever train of thought she’d been following.  _ Abs. Claire has abs. _

Their next kiss was flavored with Claire’s muffled laughter.

Despite the fact that Annabelle strictly kept her groping to over-the-clothes, she could feel heat pooling between her legs and twinging in her belly before long. Claire had small, clever hands, and they somehow managed to find her nipples through layers and layers of clothes. For Annabelle’s part she tried to give attention to Claire’s small, firm breasts, but between Claire biting her (lips and jaw and neck and earlobe, those teeth felt like they were  _ everywhere) _ and those _ abs,  _ she kept losing her focus.

It was one of the rare moments she was actually petting Claire’s chest that she noticed. “Your knife is in your _ bra?” _

Snorting, Claire pulled it out and flicked the blade free. Annabelle swallowed.

“What do you want to do to me first?” She asked, arching her back so their chests pressed together.

“Can I…” Claire looked up at Annabelle, and for once Annabelle knew she’d see only affection and arousal in there. “Stab you? Just once.”

“Yes. Go fast, though.”

Only when Claire was lining up the point of metal to just above Annabelle’s belly button, did it occur to Annabelle that this was literally a dream come true for both of them. Something they couldn’t have had if they hadn’t both decided to risk their lives and ride out the roller coaster as best they could.

And then the knife was in her.

She wasn’t sure what she’d expected. It didn’t feel at all like when she stabbed herself for transformations, but that made enough sense. If anything it felt like a punch, all the breath being pushed from her lungs in a long moment before the pain hit. Her eyes teared up, but not so much that she couldn’t see Claire’s expression.

Obviously Claire hadn’t pulled her eyes away from the spreading bloodstain since the moment it had appeared, but Annabelle was more focused on the opened mouth and swollen lips, drool slipping down her chin in tantalizing, gossamer strands that she wanted to lick up.

So she did. Because, with Claire’s blade in her belly, it was abundantly obvious to her that she  _ could. _ Holding the knife inside prevented her body from healing, so she knew they couldn’t keep it there for long, but for now it was good. Better than expected, really. She liked having a piece of Claire inside her.

Ironically, there was less bite to the kisses now that Claire was distracted. She moved the knife fractiously, in and out in tiny increments, eventually enough of a motion that Annabelle realized.  _ She’s fucking me with it. _ Annabelle moaned at the thought, and Claire thrust harder with the sound, and it was just a feedback loop of goodness Annabelle didn’t want to give up.

But coughs began to interrupt the kisses. Claire pressed her nose to Annabelle’s, an intimate touch that had Annabelle’s heart stuttering for non-blood-loss reasons. “Can I - with my fingers?”

_ “Yes, yes, yes,”  _ Annabelle said.

Those fingers pushed shreds of fabric  _ into _ Annabelle’s wound when they clumsily forced their way in. But there was room enough, with the knife removed (and discarded somewhere to stain the bed, oops).  _ This was better,  _ Annabelle decided instantly. _ So much better. _

Organs didn’t feel things like the outside of her body. It hurt, she knew it was causing pain, but couldn’t pinpoint the exact location. “So wet inside,” Claire panted happily, and Annabelle knew there was a slip-slide of fingers somewhere in there, knew she was trying to heal around it, but the ache in her torso spread too wide for her to pinpoint them.

Eventually they both slowed their actions. Annabelle realized Claire had been grinding down into the bed only when she stopped, and thought the only reason she wasn’t doing the same was because of the point in the middle of her body where she felt pinned in place.

“That was,” Claire said, after they’d both caught their breath. “Wow.”

“Wow,” Annabelle agreed. Her knife pushed its way out of her body now that her healing was no longer needed, and she caught it before it could hit the sheets.

“Don’t - don’t get injured during a fight again,” Claire said.

Blinking, Annabelle looked down at her. And then blushed, because she looked  _ well fucked.  _ “I’ll try to avoid it, of course.”

“Yeah. Yeah, because now that I know what  _ this _ is like, pretty sure I’ll be too horny to focus.”

“Um,” Annabelle fought the urge to cover her face in embarrassment. “Yes, okay.”

They were silent for a bit, just coming down from their high; though neither had come, it was still an intense experience. Annabelle probably would’ve enjoyed the semi-afterglow longer, if she hadn’t suddenly remembered something about the fight Claire had referenced.

“They stole my color scheme!”

“Wh- huh?” Claire clearly thought this was out of nowhere.

“Felix Dampierre, he wears white and yellow,” Annabelle explained. “But I’m white and blue!”

Claire laughed. And laughed and laughed, and after a moment, Annabelle joined in too. She supposed it was a silly thing to care about, but sex had always made her pretty silly. And then she stopped laughing, because, sex? Was that what this had been?

“You’re not white and blue, dumbass,” Claire said, shocking Annabelle out of her thoughts. She had a habit of doing that.

“I’m not?”

“No, your ‘white’ parts are iridescent, like your soap bubbles. You never noticed?”

“Oh, um. I suppose not.”

Darting forward, Claire caught one last peck on her lips. “You’re a moron, Annabelle Baker.”

“But I’m your moron,” Annabelle countered, breathless with her bravery.

“Yeah. Yeah, you are.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Sonia damages her liver, and the monsters get handsy.


	8. Answering Even Fewer Questions, Somehow

This battle was, quite frankly, insane. Too many moving parts, and for once Annabelle was one of them. Stopping for even a moment was suicide.

The Corrupted One was just as dangerous as what Sonia had taken to calling “the egg thing,” if not  _ more. _ It consisted of a huge shell bristling with rows of spikes, streaked pink and red like it had already gored people. Out of the mouth of the shell burst countless arms, reaching blindly in all directions. Every living thing they grasped they brought back to the hidden mouth, and horrific crunching noises followed soon after.

Annabelle was just glad they’d discovered that via a racoon, and not one of their number.

Already Felix was injured, his leg mostly dragging behind him after it had nearly been ripped clean off. It was healing, but not fast enough, and Merlin and Claire weren’t doing enough damage on their own. Annabelle was desperate enough to headbutt it, even, but the shell looked far too thick and those arms were certainly far too fast.

“Seriously, Cotton!” Sonia shouted from the very edge of the barrier. “One of them is gonna die!”

“It’s a matter of principle at this point,” the cat said snootily, as if he hadn’t almost been snatched up five minutes before. Annabelle still had the claw marks on one sleeve to prove how scared he’d been when she’d saved him.

“What fucking  _ principle,  _ do you want to win or - ”

“What is  _ that?” _

Only the fact that both Annabelle and Merlin had said it - Annabelle in a bewildered tone, Merlin furious - got Sonia and Cotton to shut up and follow Annabelle’s line of sight. Merlin grabbed onto one of the spines and used the heaving of the shell to launch himself upwards, towards the dark figure who was already retreating.

All any of them had seen was a dark brown, tattered cloak, and underneath lines of darting light in teals and rosy pinks. Apparently, that was all they’d needed to see.

“Okay, I give up.”

Sonia stared at Cotton in disbelief. “Sorry?”

“Here, catch!”

Everything was moving too quickly. Annabelle caught a flash of forest-green light out of the corner of her eye as she dodged another hand, saw Merlin give up upon reaching the gravel roof and finding it empty. One hand tried to sneak around Felix’s shield while he was fending off a different set of grasping fingers. Claire’s heel hit a spine near the tip, and a good portion of it broke off, but the Corrupted One didn’t seem hurt and certainly wasn’t bleeding.

A scream. “Liver, your liver!” Cotton’s voice.

“Where the everloving - ”

“Front, under your diaphragm, just do it!”

Four separate hands had captured Sonia and were severely limiting her movement even as they dragged her to a gruesome death. Her blade flailed, too wild for Annabelle to see it properly, especially now that she was charging forward to save her.

Small as Annabelle’s hands were, they could barely wrap around the wrists of the thing. She pried just one hand off of Sonia, broke the monstrous pinky in the process, and then there was a second flash of that same green shade.

The other three hands were forced to release Sonia as she transformed. Her hair braided and then was drawn into a tight bun, held in place by a silver chain. Lower formed a dress, with juliet sleeves and a jewel neckline, and lower still the dress flared into an impressive ankle-length skirt. The whole thing was a dark green, more subtle and elegant than the rest of their costumes.

But that was before the armored boots slammed into place, rather than shimmering into existence like their costumes were wont to do. A paunce of plates followed like a second skirt, and then a chestplate. All of them were engraved with bright green, twisty, curly, and delicate renditions of what Annabelle decided must be livers. There seemed to be more room for interpretation there than her cartoony brains left.

“What genre is she?” Annabelle actually stopped fighting entirely to stare for a moment.

“Is that a  _ katar?” _ Claire yelled from fully across the battlefield.

“Graaaaaaagh!” The Corrupted One screamed.

Sonia didn’t really have time to celebrate her newfound powers, though she did raise both hands into the air to cheer briefly. One of the spines glanced off her armor in a shower of sparks, and she laughed, saying, “Try harder to skewer me, please!”

“Jesus, I’m surrounded by perverts,” Merlin said.

And then Sonia sheared the spine clean off as Felix said, “We’re useful perverts, though!”

Hopping above the hand that had shot in her direction, Annabelle came down on the knobbly elbow hard enough to hear it snap. “Get to the main body, Sonia!”

“Also, squeeze your grip.”

“What?” Sonia looked between Cotton and Annabelle. “Which first?”

“The body!”

Big grin on her face, Sonia took advantage of the gap in spines Claire had created earlier and got in close. Her blade didn’t get through the shell the first strike, but it  _ did _ crack it, and the creature jerked off-kilter with the blow.

Of course, every single arm went to grab Sonia and remove the threat. Luckily they had Merlin to lay down cover fire, Felix to dart in close with his newly-whole leg and shield Sonia’s back, Claire to chop off fingers at every possible opportunity, and Annabelle to, uh.

“I’m feeling kind of unnecessary,” Annabelle said to Cotton.

“Hashtag relatable,” Cotton said. Aloud, and deadpan as anything.

Finally, Sonia made it through in an explosion of shell shards. Her blade hit flesh with a gush of weirdly blue fluid, and again the monster flailed its many limbs. “Okay, how do I do this, squeeze and -  _ fuck! Ow, shit, yes!” _

Sonia’s blade had a grip consisting of two horizontal bars. The bottom one braced on the heel of her palm, and she wrapped her fingers all the way around the top one. Between them were a set of spikes surrounded by a spiral pattern, which had seemed decorative.

Turned out, that spiral pattern was a set of very strong springs. Turned out there were holes to match the tips of the spikes in the top bar. Turned out Sonia’s knife was designed to stab straight through the centers of her fingers - through the  _ bones. _ “What purpose does that serve, exactly,” Annabelle said stiffly.

“It’s not because I’m a sadist,” Cotton sounded defensive. “I didn’t design the blades. It’s to utilize her power.”

“Her power?”

Corrupted One stopped moving. Or, no, its shell stopped moving, all those spines settling into stillness as the arms crawled forwards without it. The main body would be exposed, and vulnerable, soon.

“It’s a poison. Gonna affect each Corrupted One differently, I’d bet, but her blood is totally toxic right now.”

Annabelle only saw the body for a moment, and felt her face screw up in disgust. It squalled like a baby in the moment before Merlin shot a bolt of fire straight into its maw and disintegrated it.

For the first time, Sonia was the one who picked up a shard from a dissipated Corrupted One, and she turned to Cotton pleased as punch. “Alright, we’re done here?”

“Not quite,” Cotton said. He padded over to the unconscious former-monster girl, and crouched down beside her face. “Hey, don’t pretend to be asleep.”

She stirred, groaning, and Sonia actually jumped back from her a bit as though she’d transform right back into what she was. “What’s going on?” She asked, a mild, soft voice Annabelle couldn’t believe had turned into… the sounds  _ that thing _ had made.

“I can make all your darkest desires achievable,” Cotton said. “All you have to do is accept.”

“Hold on a second,” Sonia said. “You’re just offering her? But you didn’t give me - ”

“Shut up,” Cotton said without looking away from the girl’s eyes. “You’re gonna need her.”

Cautiously, Merlin narrowed his eyes. Annabelle voiced the thoughts that were plain on his face. “Cotton, who was that person on the rooftop? What aren’t you telling us?”

“Shut up,” he spat again, this time with the fur along his spine rising. “I’ll tell you later. And you, you have an offer to answer.”

Obviously, the girl who was swaying where she sat in the street didn’t know how to respond. Her mouth opened, closed, and all the while she watched the ground instead of any of the strangers crowding around her. Annabelle knew she would accept, because she had become a Corrupted One, and their desires defined them for however long they were trapped like that.

But there was so much she didn’t know, and it was adding up to a worrying puzzle. As the newest magical girl nodded her assent, Annabelle met Claire’s gaze above her mousy brown hair. Claire didn’t look any happier than Annabelle, though she was a bit more bemused.

Another flash of colored light, this one orange and cheery. “Now that that’s done,” Cotton said, sitting up and addressing all of them. “You’re gonna need to learn to work as a team. You’re kind of all over the place.”

“What do you suggest?” Felix asked. His eyes glittered dangerously.

“A bonding exercise? I don’t know how humans work, okay. You can figure something out. But you need to do  _ something. _ Easy mode is over, kiddos. The serious shit starts  _ now.” _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Sonia goes drinking and diving. Cotton fucks off, no one wears pants, and Annabelle gets Merlin sticky.


	9. Calling Out a Pedo Two, Electric Boogaloo

In all likelihood, Cotton hadn’t meant  _ this _ when he said they should do “a bonding exercise.” Annabelle liked this better than any kind of combat training, though, and when she’d suggested it, everyone else had agreed.

Claire had been delighted, Sonia had been likewise pleased, Merlin had been pleasantly surprised, and Felix had looked at Merlin in a way that clearly said he couldn’t wait to get him in a swimsuit. Lola, the newest girl, had smiled a tiny embarrassed thing, and said, “please.”

Which was why Annabelle was driving them all to a nearby lake to go swimming. It was Sonia’s car, and therefor rickety and kind of filthy, but Annabelle wouldn’t have been able to fit everyone in her buggy. Sonia’s camper van, for all its flaws, wasn’t wanting for space.

They made quite the group. Annabelle didn’t know how Lola, Claire, and the Dampierres had gotten permission from their guardians, but they had all shown up promptly that morning in various states of preparedness. Also, various states of undress, and Annabelle was glad Sonia had called shotgun because Claire’s string bikini and open sweatshirt combination was going to send her to an early grave.

Not that Sonia looked  _ bad; _ her dark skin and red hair were striking, and she hadn’t worn anything over her black and white one piece. Lola was in a cream eyelet lace cover up, and Merlin had worn a simple t-shirt with his swim trunks, so they looked presentable at least. Felix, on the other hand, dressed in an oversized shirt and bright yellow speedo.

Annabelle felt a bit like a chauffeuring mom in her blue tie-dye cover up, and imagined other people would think the same thing if they saw their group. Sonia might be close to her age, but she looked younger with those muscles; in point of fact, she was a personal trainer, Annabelle had found out ten minutes into the drive.

“I need to be careful not to injure myself too badly, y’know?” Sonia was saying. “Not anymore, of course - ha! Isn’t that something? But used to be, I wanted to be able to get that  _ burn _ and  _ ache _ every day, and that meant no injuries which might force me to take a break. So I got really good at gauging limits, and it just seemed like the natural next step to help other people do the same thing too.”

“Mhmm,” Annabelle hummed noncommittally.

“Are we there yet?” Merlin asked.

There was a quiet  _ snick _ from the far back, and then Claire said, “Did you just  _ cut my hair?” _

“Um,” said Lola.

“We’re there!” Annabelle announced, pulling into the poorly defined, dirt lot.

Piling out, they all took in the lake she’d brought them to. It was surrounded on three sides by dense deciduous forest, of the “watch out for poison ivy” variety. Its water was kind of murky with algae at the edges, and the small dock was rather rickety, but Annabelle had swum in it since she was a kid. It was cleaner than most, well-stocked with fish that would happily nibble your toes, and there were blackberry bushes in the far back that Annabelle wanted to pick through with Claire.

That would have to wait, as no sooner did Claire’s feet hit the ground than she was shedding her sweatshirt and launching herself towards the water. Annabelle didn’t even know you could cannonball without a diving board until she saw that.

“Merlin, you’re gonna swim, right?”

“Yeah, Felix, but not without sunscreen.”

“Don’t wanna let you get burned,” Felix nodded happily. “I can do your back for you.”

“No!” Merlin stepped back and frowned, saying, “I’ll get the teacher to do it. You go.”

“Alright,” Felix sounded the word out too long.  _ Alriiiiiiight. _ “But be careful, you hear?”

“She’s a lesbian or something, it’s fine.”

Though said teacher squeaked indignantly, Felix took Merlin’s word for it and followed Claire into the water - without taking off his shirt, so it ended up soaked through, semi-transparent, and certainly stained. Merlin sighed like he was trying to expel all his anger in one breath, and sat on the edge of the dock.

Sitting beside him carefully, Annabelle watched Sonia cajole Lola into getting into the water. Merlin didn’t make any move to actually use the sunscreen bottle in his hand, and Annabelle didn’t press it.

“I’m bisexual,” she said, eventually.

“Doesn’t matter, you’re with your student anyway.” He shot her a derisive look out the corner of his eye, and Annabelle fought down a flinch. “Real classy, by the way.”

“Y-you have a warped desire, too. You can’t claim to be better than the rest of us.”

“I am,” he insisted. “Because I want to kill  _ him.” _

Despite the obviousness of the hissed statement, Annabelle still followed his gaze to his brother, happily splashing in the water.

“Because he wants to sleep with you?” She asked.

“Ha, yeah, thought you figured that out.” Merlin’s voice was so humorless it kind of ached to listen to. Annabelle was glad the others were too busy messing around with each other to hear it. “And if you tell him you might find me attractive, he’ll wreck your shit, so don’t mention it.”

“I wouldn’t - ”

“Yeah, pedos have to be more subtle than that, right?”

Annabelle bit her bottom lip hard. “And you? Does your brother know you want him dead?”

“Pretty sure he does, at this point.” Merlin smirked, then pulled his shirt off. “You’ve never seen us transform, have you?”

For a moment Annabelle didn’t respond. It was a combination of things; the implication in his words, the sight of his slender torso, and the scar just above his right hip. It was a gnarled, painfully raised thing, and she couldn’t tell what had caused it.

“Help me out, for real? You’re somehow the least likely to perv on me, god help us all.”

“Claire might actually be a lesbian,” Annabelle said mildly. But she still took the sunscreen bottle, still rubbed over his shoulders and kept her touch as matronly as she could.

It wasn’t until he took over and started to slather his own arms that she spoke again. “You do feel guilty, though.”

“For what? I’m not a mind reader, you kind of have to explain.”

“For wanting to kill him.”

Merlin paused. “How do you figure?”

“Warped desires only fuel us because we let them. Did you notice? Everyone here - we’ve all hated ourselves for it, at least a little.”

They sat in silence for a while longer, as Merlin thought and Annabelle waited for her turn with the sunscreen. “Guess you’re right,” Merlin said. “I mean, he  _ is _ still my brother.”

That tone there, at the end, was something Annabelle had nightmares about. Fewer, since she’d gotten her powers, but still. A sound of betrayal, of someone who trusted you to treat them chastely, and who you turned around and turned into.

An object. A fantasy. Something less than a person, whose consent mattered.

Thankfully Merlin was done very shortly afterwards, and Annabelle was able to apply her sunscreen perfunctorily (after checking the label for parabens). Claire noticed right near the end, and swam up to cross her arms on the edge of the splintering wooden boards and rest her cheek on her forearm. “I wanted to help you with that, you know.”

“Should’ve been quicker,” Annabelle tried to tease, but her heart wasn’t in it.

“Do you wanna do mine?”

“You don’t really burn, do you?” Annabelle had noticed how tan Claire was getting recently; it was kind of hard not to, with the tan lines currently on display and tempting her.

“Well, no, but skin cancer is a scary, scary thing.”

“Can we even get skin cancer? Considering our powers and all.”

“Huh, I dunno.” Claire looked around. “Where’s Cotton when you need him?”

“Ruminating on his secrets?” Annabelle shrugged, and bit her lip again. “He still hasn’t explained anything.”

“Maybe it ended up being a false alarm. We haven’t run into any crazy powerful Corrupted Ones since then.”

“Maybe,” Annabelle conceded. She finished with her sunscreen, then gave in to the puppy-dog begging and applied Claire’s. Of course, that ended up feeling more like foreplay than anything else, and Claire groaned in exaggerated happiness at her touches. Annabelle found herself flushing redder and redder, and by the end of it she knew she had to put a stop to Claire’s theatrics.

So she pushed Claire directly into the water. The poor girl only got out half a squawk before, presumably, water went up her nose. She came up spluttering and laughing, and splashed a good wave at Annabelle.

“Hey!” Annabelle’s cover up was soaked through, now. “I’ll be freezing on the ride back. How are you going to make this up to me?”

“Sit in your lap?” Claire kicked away from the pier and giggled, “Might as well swim now you’re all wet, right?”

“Yup,” said a voice behind Annabelle. She turned around just in time to see a flash of Sonia, holding a bottle of beer, and then a foot was connecting with her shoulder blade and shoving her after Claire.

Even though there was a moment, under the water, where everything was blessedly quiet and shockingly cold, Annabelle found she wanted to come up. Back to Claire laughing, and Sonia drinking irresponsibly (seriously, where had she hidden the alcohol? Annabelle hadn’t thought she’d brought any). And to Merlin, with his too-young bitterness, and even Felix and Lola.

Because, when she surfaced, it was amongst people she thought she might someday call friends. And Annabelle had, since she’d hit puberty and realized she was different, not really had the chance to feel like that much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Sonia sobers up, Lola loses an eye, Annabelle is into BDSM, and the Dampierres stab each other.


	10. Referencing Memes is the Modern Equivalent of Talking in Riddles

Annabelle knocked over and over, loud and hard enough that her knuckles ached. “Sonia! Get the door!”

She was almost to the point of cussing out the chipped paint when Sonia finally yanked the thing open. “What do you want?”

That sneer was actually so scathing that Annabelle completely forgot what message she was supposed to be delivering. But then Cotton dug his claws into her shoulders and hissed, and she was shaken out of it. “We need to get going - there’s a Corrupted One nearby.”

“Why don’t you and your  _ girlfriend _ take care of it, honey?” Like this, Annabelle was acutely aware that Sonia was more than tall enough to look down her nose at her.

“I, well, uh,” Annabelle almost took a step back, before she remembered it would send her tumbling down the stairs.

“Claire’s out of town,” Cotton said, rather than force Annabelle to answer for him again. “Visiting her aunt. Remember that serious shit I mentioned? This could be it.”

“Could be?” Sonia’s eyes glittered - but there was no sign of her now familiar smile. “Sounds like it can wait for me to get a drink in, at least.”

“No, it really can’t.”

With an overwrought sigh, Sonia stepped out and closed the door. She was only wearing sweatpants and a sport bra, and the fact that she looked ready to throw Annabelle down and wrestle at any given moment was more than a bit intimidating. Then again, she also looked like Annabelle wasn’t even worth the effort to beat down.

Swallowing, Annabelle remembered this was the same person she’d laughed with just the previous day, and stood her ground. “Lead the way,” Sonia said, when it was clear the staredown wasn’t going anywhere.

“We need Lola, first,” Cotton said. “She’s right down the street.”

“Fine,” Sonia said, as though Cotton hadn’t just told them that three of the six magical people in this town were neighbors.

The house he directed them to was one that Annabelle actually recognized, and she winced as she walked up to it. These residents opened the moment she started knocking, and she forced an awkward smile as the little old ladies looked up at her. She thought they always looked predatory, but couldn’t be sure if it was just her.

“What is it? We just put on a pot of tea, this is no time to bother us - ”

“I’m sorry Mrs. Francis, but we really need to speak to, um, to Lola.”

“Our granddaughter?” Though they both said it in identical, surprised tones, they weren’t taken aback for long.

The one wearing an apron yelled, “Come downstairs Lola!”

And the one wearing gardening gloves yelled, “You’ve got some  _ guests!” _

“Grandma,” she said, sounding much more like a normal teenager than usual. “I was organizing my collection. What’s - oh. Um, hi.”

“Hi,” Annabelle said weakly.

“What do you want? We have better things to do than entertain you, you know, even if we are retired. So?”

“No time to explain, we’ve gotta go,” Sonia said. She actually  _ barged into the room, _ grabbed Lola by the arm, and hauled her out. The Francis’ were so shocked they just stood and stared as the door closed. Annabelle had never seen them reduced to speechlessness before; if they got you in their clutches, they could easily gripe for hours. She supposed there was one good thing about sober Sonia, after all.

Cotton pointed them in the direction of the woods where they’d fought the water-hose Corrupted One, then bounded off “to get the Dampierre’s, they have to be good for something other than sexual tension.”

Lola was practically hugging herself as she followed Sonia. Annabelle understood the sentiment; each step was practically a stomp.

“Wonder why she’s been sober so long,” she muttered to herself.

“Sorry?” Annabelle looked over in time to see Lola’s pasty skin go blotchy red.

“Oh, I, that’s. That’s my warped desire.”

Rarely had Annabelle been this bewildered since finding out magic was real. “Knowing how long Sonia’s been sober?”

“No, it’s - ”

_ “There _ you are!”

That was Sonia, and Annabelle took a moment too long to register it, because a bright whip-crack split the air and the next thing she knew was that she was lying on the ground, her back a bright line of pain. “Oh, shoot, sorry, sorry,” Lola said, and when had she gotten Annabelle’s blade in her hand?

Annabelle was transformed the next second, and as the pain faded into background noise Lola stood up. “Pretty stalking hero!” She cried, holding up the ornate, long-bladed scissors that gave her powers. “Lola Francis, transform!”

“You don’t need to do the whole bit,” Cotton said from behind her. “Honestly, television is always so inaccurate.”

In all likelihood, Lola couldn’t hear him, with her transformation already starting. She’d stabbed herself in the eye, and from it bloomed an orange rose with cream straps holding it in place. Her hair was pulled into twintails, held in place by orange bobbles with pupils painted on. Next was a dress, Alice-In-Wonderland style, that same signature shade of creamsicle orange. Rather than a pinafore, however, she was wearing a frilly cream apron.

Which, of course, was covered in a little orange eyeball print. Finally there were cream gloves - Annabelle swore they were  _ rubber _ \- with orange florals, and orange ankle-strap flats.

It was a good thing, Annabelle reflected, that she liked fashion as much as she did. Otherwise all these dresses and skirts would’ve started to look the same.

“In the name of knowing everything about everyone, I will now punish you!”

“Seriously, you don’t have to.”

“Look out!”

Again the Corrupted One lashed out, but this time Annabelle was able to dodge and get a good look at what had knocked her down. It was a giant head, dragging itself along with a distended tongue like an inchworm. It bled chunky goo from its ears, and its single eye was horrifyingly bloodshot and bulging. More worrisome, though, was the way its stringy brown hair whipped around, like - well, like whips.

“You gonna help me?  _ Any _ of you?” Sonia shouted in passing as she dodged another blow.

“We would’ve come transformed if Cotton had bothered explaining anything,” Merlin said. Annabelle turned around, and winced when she saw the boys still in their pyjamas.

She belatedly put up a barrier, then watched as Felix and Merlin both unsheathed their rapiers (and wasn’t  _ that _ a  _ look, _ vintage flannel pajamas and  _ swords). _ Rather than stab themselves though, as Annabelle expected, they wrapped each other in an embrace.

And then each stabbed the other in the back. So  _ that _ was what Merlin had meant, when he said he thought Felix knew already.

They dove into the fray, easily wounding the grotesque thing’s tongue and forcing it to stop its slow progress. But though the scent of burning hair filled the air, those whipping strands didn’t slow. One wrapped around Sonia’s katar and nearly whipped it from her grip, only failing because Sonia stepped directly into another whipcrack to keep her grip.

Lola kept starting forward, like she was going to help fight, and then faltering. She was all but cowering behind Annabelle.

“There’s a pattern,” she whispered.

“In the hair?” Annabelle tried to find it, but couldn’t see through the whirling swarm of brown. Then again,  _ eyes. _

“But it’s so  _ fast.” _

Fear was obvious in Lola’s voice, and Annabelle, suddenly, was reminded of a student about to take a test.

“Your weapon is scissors. If you can get in and cut even one strand, it’ll help us. You’re not going to find another Corrupted One better suited to your weapon.”

Staring wide-eyed and terrified at Annabelle, Lola shook her head.

And then reached out without looking and cut a lock which had been headed towards them.

Both spent a moment simply trying to process that. The monster continued fighting as if nothing had happened - so clearly the hairs didn’t have nerves, just like normal hair. Annabelle didn’t think Felix, Merlin and Sonia had noticed, even. But it was an important moment.

Slowly smiling, Lola finally, finally walked directly into the whirling mass of weapons. Merlin tried to call a warning.

It wasn’t necessary. She left the ground covered more heavily in hair than in mulch, and cleared the way for Felix to finally step forward and stab straight through that bulging eye.

Corrupted One dissipated, the shard was retrieved, and Cotton actually walked up to Annabelle to take it from her hand instead of indicating she throw it to him. He seemed subdued, and if she hadn’t known better she would’ve thought he was pensive.

“Was I wrong?” He muttered. “No, I know it was them. But this one was totally normal.”

“Cotton,” Annabelle said, as they all went back to normal. “You’re going to have to  _ explain.” _

“Yeah, why did you wake me up early, not let me drink, and then give me an opponent who couldn’t even injure me? Darling, it was a bit  _ rude.” _

“Seriously,” said Merlin. And then he levelled his blade at Cotton. “Start talking.”

The cat just watched them all, sitting very still. Only the tip of his tail twitched, a pale pink which Annabelle used to find endearing. Now, she couldn’t help but think that he was leading them all directly into danger, and he wouldn’t even let them prepare themselves properly.

Gasping, Lola broke the tension in one fell swoop. “There’s another one,” she said. “Downtown. It’s in a building, but it won’t be for long.”

All of them knew they’d need to get there fast to stop havoc from breaking out in the more populated area. But only Lola seemed eager to go, the rest casting looks at Cotton as they made their way to Sonia’s car. On any other day, Annabelle would’ve been somewhat amused at the odd procession they made as they arrived at the library. Today, she didn’t even notice the gawkers, except as obstacles she was glad she could hide the true weirdness from.

In a strange moment of unity, she knew they would all do their best to protect as many people as they could. Whether or not Cotton helped them with that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Annabelle checks out the competition, Felix and Lola grind, Cotton spills his guts, and the bad guy beats off in public.


	11. Answering like Two Questions Holy Shit it's a New Record

It had seemed unnecessary when Claire had convinced her parents to let her come back early from her vacation. Now, Annabelle was feeling so, so thankful.

This Corrupted One wasn’t the biggest they’d fought. It wasn’t the most horrifying, or the most inhuman - in fact, the torso was even more human than the egg woman’s had been. Pink-toned skin, perky breasts and shaved pussy. If you kept your eyes between mid-thigh and the neck, you might think it was a person.

But there was no head, just the exposed gore of a severed throat. And the legs were scaled and clawed like they belonged on a bird. The arms, well, Annabelle wanted to call them wings. But they certainly weren’t bat wings; they appeared, from a distance, to be feathered. Up close, it was horrifyingly evident that those “feathers” were overlapping strips of flesh.

None of this was why Annabelle was glad Claire was there, however. The dizziness currently forcing her to crawl away from the battle,  _ that _ was why.

Already Sonia had had to stab herself a second time to keep her powers going. Annabelle was tempted, so tempted, to deactivate the barrier for at least a moment and let herself heal. She could have it back up so quickly.

A car horn from outside the bubble reminded her of why she couldn’t. Once again, the Corrupted One had come into its form in the middle of the town, and only Lola’s farsight had allowed them to get to it before something horrible happened. They were currently fighting halfway into a coffee shop, and Annabelle wouldn’t risk the pedestrians.

(In the beginning it had been almost funny seeing the bewildered looks as people decided to walk around a significant portion of the sidewalk without knowing why. Now, she just wanted some rest.)

There was an immense whump, whump, concussive pulse of air around her. Annabelle was confused enough that it took her a minute to realize what had happened.

“Oh, fuck that,” Claire said. “That’s cheating.”

Of course, the Corrupted One currently taking to the air didn’t care. It swiped at them with its clawed feet, almost lazily.

Thank god the others were keeping it distracted, and thank god it wasn’t particularly interested in killing them all, because Annabelle was a sitting duck.

Merlin leapt off of a stop sign and fired another bolt of fire at it. Though a slightly red welt raised on its hip, it didn’t react in the slightest. Annabelle actually missed the screeching of the others.

Felix watched Claire and Merlin jump around in the air like crazed frogs, while Sonia managed a single swipe at the bottom of one foot. “I’ve got an idea,” he said. “Lola, throw me.”

_ “What?” _ She gave him an incredulous look, and Annabelle tried not to look up her skirt.

“Just do it!”

Seeing Felix fly shield-first towards the Corrupted One was surreal enough, especially with how Lola’s soft arms didn’t look capable of the superhuman feat, but then he put his feet under the shield and used it to - to  _ skate _ down the line of one wing, towards the neck.

The moment he reached it, he dispelled the shield and thrust into the exposed breathing hole.

“Wait!” Lola cried.

Dozens of eyes opened, one for each feather and so many, burning golden -

It took everything Annabelle had to send the shield flying toward Felix. She knew, even as her spinning vision went black at the edges, that she didn’t have a choice. If she hadn’t done it, he would be dead.

What exactly the eyes did, Annabelle wasn’t sure for a while. The events of the fight started to blur together, coming to her more in flashes than anything else.

Felix in Merlin’s arms, trembling; she could release his shield, though the relief was negligible. Sonia gripped in huge talons, and then Lola stabbing a scaly shin, and then a gaping hole in a breastplate. Claire, much closer than Annabelle expected, her cupid’s bow lips shaping words she couldn’t hear past the ringing in her ears.

“I’m sorry,” she said, unsure if the words were coming out or not. “I can’t hold it anymore.”

Her shield popped.

Someone screamed.

Only a handful of seconds had to pass for Annabelle’s mind to go clear. The blade was scarcely out of her brain before she had the tip pressed back against her forehead.

“Annabelle, dodge!”

She obeyed without thinking, ducking into a roll - but it was too slow, and her feet left the ground as talons closed around her torso. As she was lifted into the air, she saw who had warned her. Someone they hadn’t been able to get into contact with in weeks, and someone she hadn’t been particularly eager to see anyway. Cotton.

Luckily she hadn’t dropped her blade, so she could reactivate her powers and force the creature to release her with the force of the transformation.

Except it didn’t release her.

“Annabelle!”

Even though she hadn’t heard the panicked tone before, she’d know that voice anywhere.

Claire grabbed her ankle, and the creature’s eyes turned downwards from their wheeling about. As they all focused on Claire’s hand, Annabelle felt her foot begin to heat up. Only when Claire’s hand actually started steaming did she release her grip.

When she watched Claire fall to the ground beneath, she saw what looked like a sea of faces staring up at her. She didn’t know if she had the range to reach the ground with a bubble-barrier from up here, but she didn’t care. She had to.

Perhaps unfortunately, while the barrier pushed out all the normal people who’d gotten a glimpse of the fight, Cotton was now inside with the rest of them. “I swear to fuck,” Claire shouted at him. “If you know how to defeat it and you’re not telling us - ”

“I don’t,” Cotton said. Annabelle almost couldn’t hear him anymore. “I don’t.”

Turning her gaze upwards, she saw that someone was sitting on the corrupted one’s stump neck. Someone she could’ve sworn hadn’t been there before. Someone she’d never seen clearly, but would recognize anywhere, by the brown tattered cloak and the lines of light darting beneath it.

“C.C.” It said. The concussive wingbeats were like terrible punctuation.

Cotton met its hidden eyes, and he looked… sad.

It whistle-click-hissed what Annabelle could only assume were a series of foreign words. Cotton responded in kind, and it stood. Waved its hand like some sort of command.

The Corrupted One grabbed Annabelle’s shins in its other foot, and started pulling her apart. Her spine popped, an ironically pleasant sensation before the pain began to set in.

Something like despair crept in. She was almost ready to let herself go limp, give up, when.

Claire and Sonia reached her head height from seemingly nowhere. Claire released Sonia to allow her to stab her katar directly into the creature’s stomach. Its grip faltered, Annabelle slipping a bit, and those terrible eyes began to stream with tears. A result of Sonia’s poison?

Above them, Claire had formed two more platforms to reach the hooded figure. She crouched on one, trembling with the force of holding her breath. Annabelle couldn’t see under the cloak from this angle, and wondered what Claire was looking at. Neither moved for a long moment.

Corrupted One released Annabelle all at once. Sonia yanked her blade out, caught Annabelle and helped her right herself in midair. Claire was also falling in the next moment, and she caught each of them in one arm and deposited them on the roof of the cafe.

Together, the six of them watched the figure ride off on the Corrupted One. They didn’t try to chase them, and though Annabelle knew she could prevent them from escaping her barrier, she didn’t try to. This was a battle they couldn’t win, not the way they were now, not even all working together. Cotton, Felix, Merlin, and Lola all made their ways to the roof to watch the strange pair disappear into the clouds.

Finally, they were all able to let go of their powers. A rush of conversation flowed in from below, and Annabelle wondered what people would think of that flash of fantasy they’d seen so briefly. A daydream gone out of control? Mass hallucination?

“Do you want to do this here,” Cotton said. “Or somewhere more private?”

Turning around, Annabelle saw that Merlin had a sword pointed at Cotton once more. He looked deadly serious, his young face set in a calm determination she imagined might have been the last thing his brother would have ever seen, in a less magical world.

“Here,” she said. “We need to know now.”

Cotton nodded as if he’d expected this. He sat down, a tiny, unassuming creature, and finally admitted a few things.

“They’re my - my creator’s guardian.

“They’re not human. Neither of them. They come from another planet, where it’s always dark. At least, that’s what my creator told me.

“My creator wanted to make all the humans on this planet happy. They saw you all being, y’know, angsty and edgy about your own wants, and they figured they could come up with a solution. Hence the knives.

“Their guardian disagreed. I guess they must’ve sabotaged the lab or something. I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” Light tremors ran over his fur. “When I walked in, my creator was already dead. There were shards all over the place; pieces of the biggest blade they were making. And their guardian was there, staring at it all, and they said, ‘it’s better this way.’”

Silence reigned for a long moment. Annabelle kneeled down, and Cotton met her eyes without flinching. “So you ran away?” She guessed. “And this guardian scattered the shards around to, what, punish us? And you’re giving us the blades to - to live up to your creator’s desire, or to make up for this guardian’s attacks, or something?”

One of his ears flicked. “You always were better at listening when I was the one explaining.”

“One more question,” Sonia said, uncharacteristically serious. They all waited with bated breath for her next words. “Why’d they call you C.C.?”

Making a face that, on a human, would’ve been a grimace, he said, “My actual name is Cotton Candy.” Lola gasped, a delighted sound, and he whipped around and hissed. “Don’t you dare call me that, or god forbid,  _ Candy. _ Cotton or C.C. is acceptable.”

“Whatever you say, Candy.” Sonia laughed, and Claire laughed with her. A bit of the tension and misery drained out of Annabelle’s gut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRKL SPLEENS: Absolutely nothing worth the wait happens. Claire becomes a fashonista, Felix gets _denied,_ and Annabelle earns her red wings.


	12. Risking Your Whole Future to Get Your Rocks Off is the Ultimate Danger Kink

Life felt like it had been in an awkward purgatory for the past few days. Cotton had promised, had  _ sworn _ that he was going to find the ship that guardian was hiding in. Lola had agreed to help, and had taken a couple of days off of school to try using her farsight.

So far, they’d had nothing. It was eerily uneventful.

Of course, they hadn’t wasted that time. Claire had trained to see how many of them she could carry, how high she could go just in case the ship was still in the air and not landed anywhere. Annabelle had trained in maintaining barriers longer, especially the individual version - she could now maintain it on two people at once, or on a single person for much longer.

Sonia had mastered the exact grip she needed to keep her poisonous blood dripping down her blade without weakening her blows. Felix had perfected his bizarre shield-sledding technique. Merlin had figured out how to create a single bolt of fire which burned much hotter than his usual rapid-fire shots.

None of it mattered, of course, if they couldn’t find the damn alien and blast them back into space. And so, purgatory.

Which was why Annabelle had gone into school that morning with bags under her eyes and a dour outlook. This changed the instant Claire walked in the doors to the classroom, blazer unbuttoned to reveal a shirt which was definitely  _ not _ dress-code appropriate.

“Ms. Aislinng,” Annabelle said, voice choked on what she pretended was astonished anger. “What are you wearing?”

Claire blinked up at her innocently. “A shirt.”

It was one hell of a shirt. Made with… puff paint? The graphic on the pink fabric consisted of a pair of golden lungs much like the ones on her magical jacket, intersected by dripping, red letters reading:  _ GORE WHORE. _

To make matters worse, it was a crop top. Claire was  _ showing off her abs. _

“If you don’t button up, I’m going to have to take you to the office young lady.”

Calmly, Claire stared up at her. She wouldn’t wink in public, but the smirk on her lips was just as clear a signal to Annabelle. Behind her, the DVD menu music continued playing.

This was a remarkably well thought out plan on Claire’s part, Annabelle realized. She had planned to show a movie in class today, since she was so burned out and they’d just finished Much Ado About Nothing anyway. Claire knew Annabelle wouldn’t be missed if they both disappeared for most of the lesson.

Though Annabelle had no intention of playing into Claire’s little games, she still did the whole song-and-dance of, “You have until I’m done setting up the movie and handing out worksheets to make yourself presentable.” Of course, Claire didn’t do it, and as the movie’s opening shot played Annabelle marched her out of the classroom.

Whispers erupted behind them, and Annabelle had to comfort herself with the knowledge that it was just gossip about Claire being so disrespectful. Nothing else.  _ Nothing else. _

Halfway down the hallway, Claire abruptly grabbed her arm and pulled her into a janitor’s closet. Annabelle let her, partly because she’d expected this and partly because the janitor hadn’t actually arrived yet.

“ _ What _ were you thinking,” Annabelle hissed as the door closed.

Somehow, Claire actually seemed surprised. “I was  _ thinking _ it’s been way too long since we made out,” she said, as if it were a no-brainer.

“We’re getting ready for  _ battle,” _ Annabelle said incredulously. “Now isn’t the time for fooling around! We have to - ”

“You’re bleeding.”

“Sorry?” Annabelle lifted a hand to her face; sure enough, there was blood dripping from her nose. She saw Claire lick her lips. “Hey, no, this isn’t an e-excuse!”

“But you look cute,” Claire said. “Wonder if it’s because you’ve been working so hard?”

“I…” Annabelle’s hand fell to her side. Her shoulders slumped. “Claire…”

Standing up on her tiptoes, Claire captured Annabelle’s lips in a kiss. All the protests on the tip of her tongue melted into Claire’s mouth as the air between them grew heated and damp. She  _ was _ tired. The chance to let go, relax and have fun for even ten minutes in a cramped closet - that was very, very tempting.

As soon as Claire started fumbling with her shirt, however, Annabelle hesitated. “How far are we going?” The words were muffled against Claire’s hair, but understandable enough.

Claire paused, panting fairly hard considering they hadn’t done much. Was it the occasional taste of iron in their kiss that had her so riled up? Instead of answering, she said, “I’m on my period this week.”

Oh. If Annabelle wanted to know what a sexy punch felt like, now she did.

“Okay, okay,” she said. “Pad or tampon.”

Eyes glued to where Annabelle was nimbly unbuttoning her shirt, Claire said, “Whuh?”

“Which are you using, I. I don’t really, admittedly, have the best self control right now. Sorry I was angry, I’m tired and I w-want, well, you know.”

For a moment longer Claire gawked, and then, pulling her wits together, said, “My aunt got me a moon cup, actually.”

“Alright, amazing,” Annabelle said. And then fell to her knees.

She would probably enjoy having Claire on the back foot any day other than today. Right now there was just a mass of emotions roiling inside her (frustration at their fruitless search, exhausted from pretending everything was normal, arousal at Claire’s outfit) that eclipsed anything but the need to have her head between Claire’s thighs.

There was a small clatter as Claire’s shoulders hit one of the shelves, but it wasn’t loud and no sound came from the hallway to indicate someone had heard. Annabelle lifted Claire’s skirt, felt two hands land in her hair and knot it up messily. She would probably worry about that in a few minutes, but for now she was shoving aside Claire’s thong (and wasn’t that hot).

Her tongue met with flushed, moist flesh, and she groaned at the iron and vinegar taste. Claire tugged sharply on her hair, muttering, “No sounds, okay?” Annabelle could only nod, unable to express how much she loved getting even a single order from Claire.

Probably, she was getting her nosebleed all over Claire’s dark blonde pubes. But she was on her period anyway, and no one would be looking under her skirt besides Annabelle today.

Licking up and down over Claire’s outer lips, Annabelle breathed the smell in deeply and fought down another sound. She opened her mouth wide, let her teeth graze the labia as her tongue sought out Claire’s clit. It was larger than hers, and she could get it into her mouth and hollow her cheeks. One of the hands in her hair disappeared, but when Annabelle cracked an eye open she couldn’t see past the skirt.

Clumsily, she shoved it aside to see Claire biting down on the meat of her palm. Claire caught the glint of her gaze and smiled around her reddening flesh.

To her surprise, Annabelle found the thought of Claire biting down hard enough to bloody herself rather hot. She redoubled her efforts, releasing the skirt in favor of tracing fingertips up Claire’s thighs. She spread Claire’s lips open, then let her tongue dive towards the student’s entrance.

Of course, flicking her tongue in and out of Claire was more conceptually hot than it was physically stimulating. Before long Annabelle decided to zig-zag her tongue across Claire’s lips, and then returned to suckling her clit with alternating hard and soft pressure. She slipped one finger into Claire, felt the silicone shape already filling her up and shivered.

Actually fingering her with it in was rather difficult; Annabelle didn’t want to risk breaking the seal on it and spilling blood everywhere, as that would be rather hard to explain. Still, she eventually managed an angle that allowed her to crook her finger and had Claire’s legs trembling.  _ Jackpot, g-spot found. _

It didn’t take as long as Annabelle expected before Claire was tensing her thighs rhythmically, as though she was close to coming. Feeling a sense of urgency, Annabelle tried to get her free hand under her own skirt - but as a pencil skirt, it was more difficult. She sucked at Claire’s lips, frustrated and impatient.

All of a sudden Claire was using her grip on Annabelle’s hair to pull her up to head height. Before Annabelle could do more than make a breathy, surprised gasp, Claire was kissing her. Or, no,  _ licking her face clean, _ lapping up the blood in a move that should’ve been gross but just made the stickiness between her legs worse.

Finally, Claire grabbed the hand that had been inside her, and wrapped her lips around Annabelle’s fingers. Annabelle had to lean forward, had to bite at the neckline of Claire’s shirt and shake just to avoid making a sound.

Once every inch of Annabelle was clean of blood (though not of saliva), Claire released her. Annabelle slumped back against the door, panting. They watched each other in the darkness, barely able to make out their exhausted, happy grins.

“I needed that,” Annabelle admitted, eventually.

“But you didn’t get to come.”

“You did?”

“Yeah,” Claire laughed breathlessly. “You know what they say about teenagers.”

Heat still flushing her cheeks, Annabelle smiled wider and nodded.

They returned to the classroom with Claire in a properly buttoned blazer, and no one aware that Annabelle had to focus on walking to keep from looking like her knees were bothering her. That night, during training, Sonia laughed at them. Felix watched with open envy, and Merlin with an inscrutable look, while Cotton berated them for not having their “heads in the game.”

Despite it all, they both focused much better than usual. “Maybe you should fuck before the actual battle, too,” Merlin offered near the end. And then, without even having to turn and see his brother’s expression, “No, Felix.”

Pouting, Felix turned around as though he hadn’t lit up at the previous statement. Lola covered her blush with both hands, and Annabelle covered  her smile with one. Even though they hadn’t really solved anything, it felt… good, to make a sort of progress. Good to be out of purgatory. Good, that she could turn to Claire and know they didn’t need to be officially dating to be something special.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: The new guy is an exhibitionist, Cotton gets his bachelors, the story gets gayer with no end in sight, and the matrix gets cloud atlased by inception.


	13. Mandating a Genderbend Chapter

“On the left, we have the Femme Fairies, with their second ever game! On the right, the reigning champions, Bawdy Boys! Remember folks, this is just an exhibition game, so don’t be too harsh on the judges who set the match up.”

Adrien walked onto the arena with a casual flip of his long, black braid. Soren always said it was hilarious how he could be so shy ninety-nine percent of the time, and then be a showman the moment he was transformed. Cace, on the other hand, thought it was adorable.

Surveying the opponents, Adrien waited for Cace and Soren to line up beside him. One of the three was dressed in a boys’ sailor uniform, pale grey and pink, with tights that looked like intestines spiraled up the legs and a pair of twintails held up by bows. The second was also in shorts and tights, though her outfit was all pale greens and blues, pinstripes and a button-up and a brooch at her throat. The third looked to be wearing a pair of purple tulips as a dress, with the bottom flared and the top skin-tight.

Part of what Adrien loved about the sport was the style involved - which, yes, how stereotypically gay of him. He couldn’t help that his powers were particularly stylish.

Clapping his hands, Adrien set up his barrier, the nearly clear walls lending a shifting rainbow hue to the audience’s view without preventing them from watching. Purple Tulips lifted into the air on butterfly wings, spinning her polearm in nervous hands. Cace exhaled hard in preparation to follow her, then hissed, “Hey, she stole my blade!”

Adrien almost asked what he meant, until he saw Blue and Green flipping open a switchblade. The colors were different, sure, but it was the closest match he’d ever seen to Cace’s blade.

“Do you think that spear thing could impale me?” Soren asked dreamily.

“It’s a welsh hook, so probably not,” Cace answered. “But seriously, a switchblade?”

With a clicking sound, Sailor Uniform unsheathed her boxcutter. “They aren’t going to wait for us to make the first move,” Adrien pointed out.

“Dibs on the copycat,” Cace called.

“Dibs on the welsh hook,” Soren sighed.

And then they were off.

Like the announcer had said, this was an uneven matchup. The rules of the sport were simple; for each individual blow which drew blood, a point was awarded. Two teams of three fought against each other until one reached thirty points, or until an hour had passed (one hour being the lower limit of transformation duration required to participate).

Bawdy Boys, as a team, was famous for racking up high point totals very quickly. They needed to; Soren alone had given their opponents half the necessary points last match. Even for them, however, a half hour beat down was much faster than usual.

Soren turned to the audience and bowed as the song played to indicate the end of the match. He thoroughly ignored the fuming woman next to him, and rejoined Adrien near the edge of the arena. Cace landed beside them and gave a wet, deep victory kiss to Adrien. The crowd cheered loudly as Soren made gagging sounds.

Their walk back to the locker rooms was odd, as always. Soren transformed back into a normal man, albeit a very tall and muscular one. His hair, long and viking-like, maintained the two braids pulled back into a ponytail to keep it out of the way while he fought. Then Adrien let his knife fall from his head, removing his princely clothing and replacing it with something more befitting of a librarian. Before Cace could follow suit, however, Adrien heard a voice behind them.

“Good game,” said Sailor Suit. She was extending a hand to him, begrudgingly impressed.

In the hallway behind her were three figures. Her two teammates, and what looked to be a little girl in a pink raincoat. Her face was hidden, and the raincoat shifted in an immaterial wind.

Blinking, Adrien turned around.

“Good game,” said Sailor Suit. She was extending a hand to him, begrudgingly impressed. Her teammates stood in the hallway behind her, and he noticed for the first time that the blue and green one had golden eyes.

“Good game,” he agreed, shaking her hand.

“Tell the caveman back there that he needs a shave, though,” purple tulips teased.

Soren’s hand flew to his stubble-darkened cheeks, “Hey, I thought the rugged look worked on me!” He smiled, teeth blindingly white.

Blue and green giggled. Then the girls retreated, presumably towards their locker room, and left their former opponents to go on their way.

Inside the Bawdy Boys’ own room, they found four familiar faces. “Hey priss party!” Soren said, kicking the door open.

_ “Pirouette _ Party. What took you guys so long?” Said Mariela, her pancake tutu and rapier already out and ready for a fight.

“Yeah! At the rate you were going, we thought we wouldn’t have time to mock you before our match,” Felice agreed, her white-and-yellow beadwork contrasting her sister’s black and red beautifully as always.

“Mock us?” Cace said, “We beat them fair and square!”

“I don’t know if I’d call it that,” Leon replied with a coy smile. “Tay, who named the group, only got out of - ”

“Did they ask?” The teams’ manager, Cotton said.

“Aw, Cotton, don’t be rude,” Adrien sat on a bench and stretched his sore legs out.

“Cotton?” Cotton said.

When Adrien looked up, there was a little girl in a raincoat where his manager had been before. The hood opened only into a yawning darkness, and it moved of its own accord, pieces in one direction and parts in another. Where it met the ground, it was like -

“Did they ask?”

“Aw, C.C, don’t be rude,” Adrien sat on a bench and stretched his sore legs out.

Leon nodded gratefully to him as he stabbed himself in the eye with his scissors. His transformation into a cream and orange butler’s uniform took only a moment, and then he and his identical teammates were leaving with a parting shout from C.C. “Don’t break a leg!”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Mariela said, tossing her wavy bangs out of her eye and leading the way out. Adrien sighed as he watched them go.

“So,” C.C. said, crossing his mottled white-and-brown arms over his ample belly. “How do you think you did today?”

Wincing, Adrien said, “I hate when you phrase it like that.”

C.C.’s short, kinky hair was all in shades of pastels, and his skin was what Sonia liked to call “cinnamon sugar,” much to his annoyance. For all intents and purposes, the short, chubby man shouldn’t have been intimidating. Yet he raised a single, pink eyebrow, and Adrien shut his mouth promptly.

Kitty tail flicking in annoyance, C.C. turned his glare on Soren. “Well?”

“We talked about this,” Soren said with a shrug of his immense shoulders. “As long as we keep winning, I’m not gonna stop.”

Ears going back, C.C. insisted, “She shouldn’t have been able to land  _ any _ blows on you.”

Was it odd that C.C. had cat ears and a tail? Adrien felt like it was, like it must be, but he couldn’t place why. And regardless, it was hard to focus on when C.C. grilled them on the mistakes they’d made. He was a good manager, really, for both his teams (and very few people could handle two teams). And when he needed to, he was a fantastic listener, which only made sense as a licensed psychologist (which all managers needed to be).

But that psychology degree made him a menace at times. This was one of them. Halfway through him explaining how Adrien needed to be more proactive next time, Cace exclaimed, “Oh, shit!”

“Yes? Did you have something to add?” C.C. said scathingly.

“Yeah, our dinner reservation is in like, ten minutes. Fuck, we gotta go.”

“Oh, um, please?” Adrien tried.

C.C. rolled his eyes and his tail flicked again. “Alright, off you go. It’ll probably take me hours to get through Soren’s thick skull anyway.”

“Ha! Ain’t that the truth.” Soren waved them off, saying, “Have fun on your date darlings.”

They stopped briefly to watch Pirouette Party fight. As Mariela took a swipe that blinded her left eye temporarily and left her snarling unattractively, Adrien said, “Didn’t you make the reservation late enough to account for C.C.’s whining?”

“Nope,” Cace popped the p at the exact same time Leon left a deep stab wound in his opponent’s hip. “Wanted the excuse to bail you out.”

Surprised, Adrien chuckled. “In that case, thank you.” Felice got the barest scrape on her cheek, and they headed out, though they kept in mind that they’d need to tease the less experienced team about losing those points later.

The restaurant they were eating at was rather expensive, but they could afford it with their combined funds; and as of the end of the year,  _ all _ their funds would be combined, which the ring on Adrien’s finger reminded him of constantly.

“Remember when we met?” Cace said suddenly.

“Hmm?” Adrien looked up from where he’d been watching his wobbly reflection in the wine. “Yes, of course I do.”

“I thought you were so cool, I’d only just graduated high school and there you are, a college senior, giving me attention.”

“I was a nervous wreck,” Adrien remembered fondly. “You were…”

His eyes widened with horror. There was  _ something _ behind Cace. Peeking out from the side of his seat, its restless form mimicked that of a human child, but it  _ wasn’t. _ That body, pink tubes pulsating, tendrils peeking out from the bottom. He vomited all over the surface of the table, Cace pushed back and shouted, and Adrien looked back up.

“I thought you were so cool, I’d only just graduated high school and there you are, a college senior, giving me attention.”

“Was I?”

“Huh? Yeah, what else would you have been?”

“Wake up, Adrien,” C.C. said impatiently. “Wake up. Adrien, wake up, wake up, Adrien,  _ Annabelle! Wake the fuck up!” _

Opening her eyes, Annabelle jumped backwards as fast as she could. Still, she narrowly avoided the strange weapon that had been swung at her.  _ “How dare you,” _ hissed a voice.

“Thank fuck!” Cotton was shouting from a black, metal cage in the corner. “You took forever, what the hell!”

“Sorry,” Annabelle said. She squared up in front of the alien, the  _ guardian, _ and looked around her at all her friends standing serenely around like the world’s most fragile pillars. Each had what looked like a single wire going into their temples, and she had to swallow down bile again. At least she could be reasonably sure of how to free them from their prison - a  _ simulation, _ she realized. And a weird one at that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Claire and Merlin catch the gay! Annabelle's memory gets Rocky, she roadhouses episode three, and her (not) girlfriend is a weeb!


	14. Filling in the More Confused Readers

“We found it. Now, when we go in, I know they’ll have set traps to stop us. I’ll do my best to warn you, but you’ll all have to be on your guard. If they decide to talk to us I’ll act as a translator. The only reason you didn’t understand them last time is because I didn’t bother doing that.”

Annabelle nodded solemnly; she’d expected the announcement as soon as Cotton had gathered them all together. Lola trembled with nerves, but she’d been doing that for an hour. Sonia was… drunker than usual, Felix was concerned, and Merlin and Claire both looked like they’d been punched in the gut.

“Are we heading out right now?” Claire asked, her voice weaker than Annabelle had ever heard it before.

“We  _ need _ to go now. They’re probably going to move the ship as soon as they know  _ we _ know where it is.”

All of them were silent for a moment. Quietly, Annabelle said, “You don’t have to go.”

“What? Yes she - ”

“No, Cotton, listen.” Annabelle steeled herself and straightened her spine. “You’ve all done amazingly so far. But you’re also high schoolers, or about as mature as high schoolers.” Sonia raised her glass at that. “This is a b-big deal. No one can force you to risk your lives, not even for some grand ‘purpose.’ If you decide to stay behind, no one will judge you.”

Though Cotton’s petulant posture where he sat on the coffee table argued otherwise, he said nothing. Which in itself was pretty telling.

“I’m going,” Sonia announced. “Immature or not, I’m still an adult. Need to make sure the planet’s still around for the younger generations, and all that.”

Reaching across the table, Claire caught Annabelle’s hand in hers. “I’m going too,” she confirmed, voice strong as steel. “I’m not going to let go of you now.”

“That’s gay,” Cotton said dryly.

Merlin and Felix took a moment to simply look at each other. Each seemed to be waiting for the other to say something first, and neither was willing to break eye contact. Eventually, though, Merlin said, “No one can kill you but me.”

“That’s gayer.”

Felix nodded as though that settled everything, and turned to Annabelle. “We’re going, too.”

“It’s decided then.” Cotton got to his feet, and everyone else in Annabelle’s living room followed suit. “We’re going to want to take the car at least part of the way, just so you all know.”

They moved in an awkward huddle out of the house to the camper van, and Annabelle, at least, felt like the world’s eyes were on her. It had thankfully turned out that no one had gotten a photo or video  of their battle in the middle of town, and she didn’t think anyone had recognized her, but paranoia had crept in anyway.

Besides, wasn’t it wrong for the fate of the world to be determined in a quiet, private battle?

For the first half hour, the drive was tense and uncomfortable. Claire had slipped her hand in the gap between the front seat and the door to hold the hem of Annabelle’s shirt, which Annabelle felt as a periodic, comforting tug on one side. Sonia sipped water, for once, as though even she wanted her to sober up a bit. Felix and Merlin whispered back and forth. Lola waited, silent and tucked in on herself.

But then, to be honest, it started getting boring. Annabelle had to focus on the road and the instructions Cotton was giving her, but they’d been on the same straight stretch of rural road for a while now, and, well.

“Are we there yet?” Felix said.

“No, and also everyone hates you for asking,” Cotton said from his spot in Sonia’s lap.

“Don’t say that,” Annabelle said. “We’re all a bit strung out.”

“Ha! Honey, you don’t know the meaning of the word.”

“For once in your life, Sonia, could you be a little less condescending?”

Everyone (except Annabelle) turned to stare at Claire for the snapped statement. Lola, so softly it was almost lost under the rumble of the engine, said, “I second that.”

“Ouch,” Cotton said.

“Ouch,” Sonia agreed, and shut up.

In the end it took two hours to get there. “Now I get why we had to leave immediately,” Claire said as she got out and stretched her legs.

“Isn’t this a national park?” Annabelle did a slow spin, took in the size of the trees and the untouched nature feeling. “What a weird place to park.”

“They probably picked it because it reminded them of their home planet,” said Cotton.

“Oh, are there many trees there?”

“No.” The seven of them walked into the tree line, Cotton in the lead. Abruptly the light overhead seemed to go away, plunging them into a premature night. “But it’s always dark.”

Noises surrounded them, animals going about their normal business or investigating the humans come to visit. Again, Annabelle thought this must be a mistake; shouldn’t the alien ship have scared them all off? Shouldn’t their instincts tell them that this was a dangerous place to be right now?

Belatedly, it occurred to her that movies didn’t usually include this part. The trek between briefing and battle was remarkably… boring. Probably a good reason to cut it out.

The first time they saw the ship, on the other hand, was anything but.

It loomed over them all easily, an oil-slick colored shape that reminded Annabelle of nothing so much as a skipping stone for giants. That is, until Sonia reached out to touch it and the whole thing rippled. “It’s soft,” she muttered.

Cotton, Annabelle noticed, looked like a cat who had willingly condemned himself to the vet. “Let’s get this over with.” He padded up to it, stood on his hind legs and pressed his pink front paw to the highest point he could reach. Again, it rippled, but this time the surface peeled back to reveal a semi-circular pathway which seemed to glow with a subtle yellow-green.

Without saying anything else, Cotton walked in. Annabelle made eye contact with Claire and Lola, and the two girls both pulled out their blades to transform. Sonia already had it out, so there was no need, and Merlin and Felix still seemed off in their own world. Claire hissed at them, “Hey,” and they jerked away from one another. Only to have to come back together to transform, of course.

“What are you two whispering about?” Annabelle asked Merlin, right before they stepped in.

“Tell you about it if we live,” Merlin said.

As soon as they were inside, the entranceway sealed up behind them as though it had never existed. Annabelle didn’t like the inside; her shoes wanted to slip on each step, and the omnipresent light left a complete lack of shadows, which was incredibly disconcerting. The more they walked, however, the more they saw things which were both familiar and… not.

Finally, unable to take the confusion any longer, Claire said, “Is that a swimming pool?”

“Huh? I guess. It’s a soaking pool, they use it for - ”

And that was the moment Annabelle’s memory got a bit strange. A blurr streaked past them, Lola had cried out just early enough that Annabelle was able to turn around and meet a pair of inhuman eyes. They had no whites, the irises were streaked teal and rosy pink, the pupils were slitted. And all around them was a dark blue-purple face, expressionless and yet so, so human, it made her ache in the moment before things went black.

Then had been Adrien, and Cace and Soren and Mariela and Felice and Leon. Then had been a few precious hours that Annabelle was trying very hard not to think about at the moment.

When she’d woken up from the simulation, it  _ hadn’t _ been to the same hallway they’d been in, nor the swimming pool, nor any other room they’d passed. This looked like the epicenter of a spider’s web, with tunnels heading out of it in every direction. The walls were veritably coated in wires and tubes, most of which led to vats filled with bubbling fluids in odd colors and textures. Annabelle could swear the one in the back was a lava lamp.

Actually freeing the others from the damn simulation was proving much harder than she’d first anticipated. The guardian moved fast, faster than any of them even with their powers. Cotton kept shouting their moves out beforehand, which was the only thing keeping Annabelle alive.

Clicking with annoyance, they said, “Will you not  _ cease?” _

“No can do. Left!” Annabelle bent her body at an improbable angle that had even her augmented abs protesting. “Should’ve killed me if you didn’t want me to speak.”

_ “Insufferable creature.” _

Annabelle’s skirt flared as she tried a desperate roundhouse kick, which she only half-remembered how to do from childhood tae kwon do lessons. It worked, though. Somehow her foot landed, and the guardian stumbled backwards. And since the room wasn’t too large, Annabelle could reach out and grab the first wire her hand touched, could yank without looking.

Claire gasped, and the guardian actually stepped back a couple of paces. They  _ were _ breathing hard, Annabelle saw. And upon her first chance to look at them without having to fight for her life at the same time, she realized they were very, very  _ human. _

Two sets of arms, yes, and it looked like their limbs had some sort of exoskeleton on them, and the lines of bioluminescence contrasted their inhuman skin tone strangely. They looked to have short tentacles coming from their head instead of hair, and their teeth were certainly too sharp to belong on a human.

But they were wearing - and Annabelle hated herself for making this connection before anything else - what looked like Jedi robes. Yes, they could bend each joint entirely too far, but they wore  _ shoes, _ and Annabelle was glad she hadn’t noticed in the middle of fighting because she would’ve faltered if she had.

_ So human.  _ And wanting to punish an entire species for the loss of a single charge - that was human too.

“Is that them?” said Claire, coming up next to Annabelle.

“That’s them,” she said.

“You will not leave this place alive.” Their voice rattled wrongly even through Cotton’s translation. Honestly, Annabelle still wasn’t sure how that worked.

“Cheery,” Cotton said.

Now working as a team, Annabelle and Claire moved forward. The guardian turned around, towards one of the walls, and Annabelle knew it had to be a trick. Because this was not an opponent who would run. She  _ knew _ that now. Just like she knew they wouldn’t attack her incapacitated friends just to get a cheap shot at her. They fought with a code of honor, with breathtaking intelligence -

They ran headfirst into a wall, and for a moment Annabelle thought she’d have to reassess her opinion of them. Then the wall  _ warped _ and  _ morphed _ around them, and revealed a glossy plastic shape underneath, and she realized she had to reassess her opinion of the room itself.

“Is that a  _ mech?” _

“You know what a mech is?” Annabelle asked.

“Yeah, gundam’s still a thing.”

“Focus, people!”

“C.C. will be punished for his betrayal later. For now, you die!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Annabelle picks Cotton... up. The girls try to squash a bug, Annabelle failed biology, and Claire drinks a redbull.


	15. Mixing Genres, for Real this Time

Truth be told, it was somewhere between a mech and power armor in size and use. It looked disturbingly beetle-like, completing the strange insect/deep-sea-creature hybridization vibe. Its shell was closer to the guardian’s skin color than the rest of the ship, but was iridescent and lacked bioluminescence. The head was a thick, blunt thing meant for ramming, the limbs sharp as knives.

Most threatening, however, was the likely reason it had run for  _ this _ weapon after Claire had been woken up. It had a pair of armored wings.

They were fighting up high, Claire wearing the only armor Annabelle could give her. Over and over again, Annabelle tried to run for the wires incapacitating the rest of them, but Guardian managed to notice and dive every time, which forced Claire to defend her.

In the beginning, it had looked like Claire might actually win. But Annabelle was quickly realizing that the alien had incredible stamina, and more importantly, they were running out of time.

If everyone transformed back before she could get the wires out, she wouldn’t know how to release them. They wouldn’t magically heal head wounds any longer, and while transforming Lola would be easy (she could see the scissors tucked into the apron strings, and an eye was an obvious enough target) she wasn’t actually sure where to stab for Sonia, Felix and Merlin. She could guess, but that would be a dangerous, dangerous game to play.

Watching the fight carefully, Annabelle whispered to Cotton from the corner of her mouth. “Why aren’t you calling out moves anymore?”

He responded the same way; which was weird, because Annabelle hadn’t known cats could do that. “Never seen them fight in that thing before. They practiced sparring all the time, though.”

“Can you predict  _ any _ of their moves?”

“Some. Not enough to matter.”

Fuck. They  _ needed _ Lola, with her observation skills, but Guardian knew that and was “protecting” her most vigorously. Sonia was the furthest from her, so maybe…

“Claire, uppercut!” Cotton burst out.

Annabelle didn’t even bother looking. Claire could land the hit, she knew, and even if she didn’t it would still put the Guardian off-balance, delay their reaction time enough to -

There! Sonia stumbled forwards as her head healed rapidly, Annabelle catching only a small glimpse of her brain before her skull sealed it over. Guardian whistled, a high warble she figured must be anger or frustration or something similar.

About thirty seconds later, Sonia had already taken in the situation. “That was one helluva dream,” she said, stabbing her katar into her body once more.

“Yes,” Annabelle agreed. “But we have bigger problems right now.”

Sonia joined the fray, Annabelle’s second bubble-shield over her. Now Guardian truly had their work cut out for them, as stopping Annabelle became more imperative than ever, but also left them open to  _ two _ attacks. Having six limbs with which to defend helped, but still.

Again, Annabelle tried to sneak around to Lola. She didn’t make it halfway there before one clawed limb caught on her shoulder, sent her spinning and left blood soaking her clothes.

“What did I say about getting hurt?” Claire shouted.

“Sorry!” Annabelle chuckled, and the mech faltered, but not for long enough for them to take advantage of it.

Her shoulder really, really hurt. She considered trying to get to Merlin for the sake of his cover fire, but that blow had landed her near Cotton once more, and he whispered before she could move, “Free me.”

“What? Why?”

“I can help. Just do it.”

The locking mechanism on the cage was beyond anything Annabelle could puzzle out. At a loss, she just picked the thing up, and slammed it down as hard as she could.

“Hey! No, fuck, I didn’t -  _ whatever.” _

Cotton crawled out of the scattered sticks that were left, and shook his fur out. “Okay, what I’m gonna do,” he pitched his voice quieter suddenly. “Is run.”

Oh. “They want to punish  _ you _ more than the rest of us,” Annabelle realized. “They’ll chase you.”

“Exactly,” he said. “They’ll either run after me or to the controls to seal my exit. The latter’s still in this room, but, well, you can figure it out.”

And then he was off like a shot, calling over his shoulder, “Don’t miss this chance!”

For a long moment, Annabelle wasn’t sure if it would work. Guardian didn’t falter this time, kept fighting smoothly. A stab at Sonia, since swipes glanced off her armor in showers of sparks. She dodged, no matter, and Claire stabbing at the chest was nothing to defend against with all that bulbous armor in place.

But then they broke away from the fight. Towards one of the walls. Towards  _ controls. _

There was a second where Annabelle held her breath, an endless second of her leaping for Lola, her fingers closing around the wire, and the almost imperceptible sucking sound as it was pulled from her temple. Her eyelashes fluttering, eyes opening, an intake of breath - her or Annabelle, she didn’t know.

“Above the topmost arm,” Lola whispered.

“Above the topmost arm!” Annabelle echoed, at a volume their fighters could actually hear.

Guardian was already in the process of lifting its limbs to cover the weak spots, but it didn’t matter. Claire and Sonia each landed a blow simultaneously, and cracks ran crazed over the armor, culminating in a spot in the upper chest. A piece fell off, and another, revealing Guardian’s snarling face.

Lola was already running for Merlin, so Annabelle went to Felix. Guardian turned away from the controls, either because Cotton wasn’t worth the risk or because his route was already closed off. Annabelle didn’t know, but what she did know was that they weren’t out of the woods yet.

It seemed like Guardian took longer to warm up to the fight than they did. Even with all of them now engaged in the battle, they were having an easier time of it than they’d been when it was just Annabelle. Conversely, they’d come into the fight already drained and disoriented.

Merlin fired at the head, and the middle arm almost lazily lifted and  _ bounced the fire back.  _ Felix was forced to lift his shield, and before Annabelle could consider if that would’ve counted as Merlin killing him or not, Sonia was being taken momentarily out of commission with a sideways blow to the belly that audibly forced all her breath out. Lola tried to cut through the last arm joint, and despite its thinness  _ couldn’t. _ Claire tried to stomp on the head from above and was forced to jump away at the last moment by another sharp limb.

All the five fighters could do was keep them occupied. And all Annabelle could do was watch, helpless and increasingly frustrated.

When she saw the opening, she had to take it. It didn’t matter that it was a small thing, the arms momentarily moving out of the way of the armor’s new weak spot. It didn’t matter that she only had one weapon, and it was one she  _ didn’t want to use. _

She charged forward, full speed, jumped into the air and she, well, she just fucking  _ headbutted _ it.

A disorienting swirl of colors surrounded her, and the last thing she thought before she fell into Guardian’s mind was that this may have been a mistake.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Annabelle gets ripped. The aliens get jiggy with it, Claire joins a frat, and everybody moves on.


	16. Accidentally Making the World's Worst Political Comedy

_ Trepidation/anger/challenge: are you sure you want to see this? _

_ Yes. _

It wasn’t like being inside a Corrupted One’s mind. They were… only one thing, only  _ permitted _ to be one thing. Fixated, and determined in a twisted way, but  _ simple. _ Annabelle didn’t know if a human mind, with all its complications, would feel this overwhelming, but she suspected not. At least  _ that _ was familiar.

The guardian was terrifyingly alien. Everything from its sensory processing to its leaps in logic was foreign on the most basic level. She was trapped in a whirlwind, unable to orient herself and - she didn’t know. Convince them to stop fighting? Incapacitate them?

It didn’t matter. She couldn’t do anything but let herself be torn apart like a shred of paper in the wind of a storm. Just when it seemed like she’d be left adrift forever, there was a parting in the winds.

_ Fond/hurt/peace, _ a memory. Annabelle latched onto it.

There was a smiling face, and she knew immediately she’d been meant to see this. And so she watched, perhaps even more carefully than she would have otherwise.

“Welcome back to the waking world, Whisper,” they said.

Of course, their name wasn’t really Whisper. Quiet in the night, shadow-sound, creeping shape soft on stone susurrus. Whisper.  _ Me. _

_ The name they gave me. _

“Hello,” said Whisper, said Guardian.

“I have made wonderful progress on the project!”

The  _ soft/gentle/affection _ soured rather quickly. Whisper climbed out of the soaking pool and pulled their dripping clothes closer to their body. “I will follow.”

They led Whisper to their laboratory - the whole place felt vaguer than they did, like it wasn’t the  _ point _ of the memory. The creature lying on the table in a loaf-shape, though,  _ that _ was familiar.  _ That _ burned with clarity.

“What is it?” Whisper asked.

“It is an animal they keep as an emotional companion, sometimes. Watch.”

Though it didn’t move as they petted it, it began to rumble with a familiar sound. “It purrs like us,” Whisper mused.

“Is it not wonderful?”

And Whisper looked at their princess, the one they had sworn to protect through the coldness of space and on this strange new planet, and was not thinking of the cat when they said, “Yes.”

What an odd sensation it was. They didn’t look any different than usual, and yet Whisper’s chest squeezed with an acute pain. Dark magenta skin, lime and blue lines running through it to match their eyes. Long tubular frills sprouting brightly from their forearms and hips and head. Only two arms, because why would royalty need extra limbs? To  _ work? _ They had claimed that there was a scientific explanation for it, but Whisper hadn’t cared to think on that. The simple fact of their place in life made more sense.

Lily Clover. A plant which bloomed on the surface of the oceans of homeplanet, near only the most beautiful beaches. Whisper had seen it once, though not in its natural environment. Still, it had been  _ breathtaking _ .

They whirled away from the memory, Whisper and Annabelle both. Whisper’s attention was elsewhere, Annabelle could tell, but still they led the way. Kept her from being swept away before she could see the next…

“This one is tricky,” Lily Clover said.

Whisper turned back from their forms to see. It was large; Lily Clover had well over two feet on the tallest humans they had seen, and even for them the sword would be impractical. That was, of course, if the princess would’ve ever held a sword in the first place.  _ They would not. _

That was Whisper’s job.

As Lily Clover spun around, their white, flowing robes flared in layers like flower petals. Whisper could never bring themself to look away these days. Back at home, there had been enough danger to distract them; here, they didn’t know.

“I…” they said.

Lily Clover smiled at them, fine white teeth and a crinkle in their eyes. “Yes?”

Why did they hurt?

_ That’s love, _ Annabelle realized.

_ Was that what it was? _

All it took was a single accident. Whisper didn’t want to show Annabelle that. But the  _ regret/horror/fear/guilt, _ so all-encompassing they couldn’t imagine feeling anything ever again, pushed it to the forefront. A memory they had relived more times than they could fathom and yet had never been able to find a different ending for.

More than the physical pain, the shrapnel cutting through their cheek and the concussive blast knocking them against the door frame, there was the knowledge that this was  _ their fault. _ Not in a nebulous,  _ could-have-prevented-this _ way, but in another memory, deeper under the misery.

A dark workroom. One long scratch down the blade, render it useless, and cover it in a lacquer so Lily Clover won’t notice. The one blade they meant to give directly to a human. When it didn’t work, they would give up, Whisper  _ prayed _ they would give up.

Instead, they ran a final test, and the sword exploded.

And then they held their love’s head in their hands, all four, and grief swallowed everything else. They knew the moment Cotton walked in, and knew the moment he ran in a terrified, frenzied route. They had liked him, despite hating the “mission” Lily Clover had built him for. They almost wanted to bring him back, to end the echoing emptiness of the ship.

At that point, it had still been in the air. They had looked around the room at the wreckage, that immense blade torn asunder into who knew how many shards.

There hadn’t been any planning to it. Those shards could’ve just as easily landed in the ocean as in a city, given that Whisper had dumped them to the planet below without looking. And why should they? The whole purpose of their life was over. Gone.

Though Lily Clover hadn’t been religious, they had still kept their hearth-plant healthy. Whisper went to it, saw the yellowing in the leaves, knew it was because of the sleep Lily Clover had been losing over this  _ project. _

That plant went out into the void, too, and Whisper hoped it died in space. Whisper hoped Cotton died too, though his artificial body likely wouldn’t. Why should the humans get what they wanted, when Whisper had lived their entire life without?

Wanting freedom and love and Lily Clover. And now that they were here, and they had been  _ so close, _ that chance had been taken away too. If they knew their own desires were wrong, shouldn’t they be punished the way they knew they deserved?

When Whisper had seen the first Corrupted One, it felt like divine providence. Like Lily Clover coming back for just a moment to say they were right.

_ You can’t take things from others just because you’re hurting,  _ Annabelle thought. _ That’s not “right.” _

_ And what do you know about right?  _ The voice felt like it was coming from all around her, words and not, a different language and yet perfectly understandable.  _ The moment you were given the power to, you took advantage. _

Yet beneath that was the  _ confusion/frustration/why. You rejected the simulation. _

_ I gave you everything you could have wanted. Systemic power, and a world where you could love her openly, and an identity everyone recognized as legitimate, and endless fun with a meaningful reward for your struggle at the end. Why? _

Annabelle didn’t know how to phrase her answer. But, connected mind-to-mind, that didn’t matter. The sentiment came through anyway.  _ It wasn’t about getting what I wanted. _

She  _ had _ wanted punishment, for so long. And before that she’d wanted to be different from how she was. Being given that world, it was wonderful, but she - she hadn’t  _ needed _ it. It  _ or _ the simulation.

In a strange moment of clarity she could see a future, and knew it was at least in part Whisper saying,  _ yes, Lily Clover ran predictive software on it. _ Claire would have graduated, and Annabelle would’ve never seen her again. Claire would have gone to college and fallen into stone butch culture and loved it, Claire who Annabelle abruptly remembered had worn her hair over her face when the school year had started.

Sonia and Annabelle would’ve started hanging out eventually. Maybe Lola, too, if she got sick of watching. Sonia would’ve sobered up. When the Francis’ died, Lola would’ve moved in with Annabelle, and Sonia with her. In forty years Merlin and Felix would see each other at a family reunion and think about what could have been, but be happy beside their wife and husband respectively.

Life would not have been perfect, and it could have been so wildly  _ different _ from what Annabelle was picturing, but it would have gone on. And as they’d grown, and aged, and denied themselves what they wanted, they would have… been okay with that. If they had a penchant for horror movies, or particularly weird comics - who cared?

It was strange to think about it so optimistically. Annabelle wasn’t naturally like that, had considered… much darker futures. And Whisper saw that, too.

One final memory, then. When Whisper had been much smaller than they were now, and Lily Clover even smaller than that.

In a set of tattered, brown robes, Whisper - then nameless - was shoved to the stone floor before the tiny figure veritably swallowed by their immense pile of ornate pillows. Already, Whisper hated them, expected a name from them like  _ obedient/lesser/follower _ or  _ cheap/gutter/joke. _

Disgust followed, from Annabelle, and Whisper learned something the same moment Annabelle remembered it. Lily Clover could have been a bad person, or at the very least a complicated one. It didn’t matter. They were dead now, and besides -

_ I loved them. _

_ Whisper, _ they said. And again as they grew, and again, over and over, the one constant in a sea of shifting political ties and debates Whisper never cared to be educated in. A smile Whisper knew better than their own.

Even if it had just been once, they wished they could’ve felt that skin on theirs, the slow give of their armored limbs, the smooth glide; they couldn’t, though. And that was… in some ways, okay. In most it wasn’t, and wouldn’t be for a long time. But.

Her parting thought was just a small realization Whisper didn’t catch the implications of before they could separate.  _ Didn’t care to be educated in politics? Lily Clover didn’t tell you?  _ And then an,  _ oh, you didn’t know, and that was why you made Cotton a - _

_ Your culture did what? That’s disgusting! _

Annabelle pulled away and abruptly found herself in a body with too few limbs. For a moment her vision spun, and she was aware that the entire mindmeld must’ve taken only a handful of milliseconds no matter how long it had felt. Whisper, too, took a moment to acclimate, and in that time Annabelle saw - their brain looked nothing like a brain at all. It was more like a jeweler's attempt at honeycomb, glistening and gorgeous, oozing golden honey (which must have been their blood) down their forehead.

Though the wound didn’t instantly seal, neither did it look to be fatal. Whisper met Annabelle’s newly steadied gaze, and slowly lowered the mech’s limbs. All of them.

“What?” Claire sounded frantic. “Oh _ no,  _ Annabelle, fuck shit dammit  _ fuck,  _ are you okay?”

“Yes,” Annabelle said. “I think it’s over.”

A series of clicks issued from Whisper’s mouth, and around her the others tensed. But Annabelle knew the tone, if not the words, after what she’d just seen. An agreement.

“Anyone wanna explain what just happened?” Merlin slammed his sword into his sheath.

Cotton padded back into the room, and said, “Seriously, I have had it up to here with these shenanigans! I swear to every deity Annabelle, if you did what I think you did - great! You did! The universe is saved thanks to how gay you are. Congratulations.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Underaged drinking is legal now. Claire gets in the spirit of giving, and Merlin gets in the spirit of receiving. Cotton spins the bottle. Annabelle has a happy ending.


	17. Ending it with Some Cliches

“What’s in it?”

“Cranberry juice, pineapple juice, orange juice, rum - ”

“Sonia! You can’t g-give Claire alcohol.”

“I’ve had it before,” Claire said, tucking herself under Annabelle’s arm.

Surprised, all Annabelle could do was let her. “Really?”

_ “Anyway,  _ there’s also vodka, and you can see the lime wedge.”

“No food coloring? Really?”

“Nope! And it’s delicious.”

Claire sipped, then made a pleased sound. “It really is.”

“I’ve never had alcohol before,” Lola said meekly.

“Don’t worry, yours is pretty weak. It’s just triple sec and orange cream soda.”

Sighing heavily, Annabelle tried to find the willpower to put a stop to the underaged drinking. It was… kind of hard, though, when Claire was warm and tucked close to her. The girl was beginning her final growth spurt, Annabelle thought, and their kisses were no longer so awkward. She’d be entering her senior year soon, and when that happened Annabelle would no longer be her teacher.

“What did you make us?” Felix peeked his head into the kitchen to ask; it was too small to fit them all at once.

“Tequila sunrises. You’re welcome.”

Okay, yeah, Annabelle gave up. It was kind of hard to take the high road when she already had her second midnight kiss still in her hand. Also, when she had the… specific guest she had invited in her living room, holding a purple rain.

“Remind me again why you commandeered my kitchen to supply a bunch of teenagers with alcohol?” Annabelle said.

“You have blue curacao, and I don’t. Also, I had to repay Claire for her gift.”

“Gift?” Annabelle would’ve argued with the first point (Sonia had brought over a veritable bar’s worth of booze to make the drinks) but the second had her pausing. “What gift?”

Claire smiled up at her sheepishly. “Okay, so you remember this shirt,” she tugged the hem to demonstrate, not that she needed to. Annabelle could already feel a blush coming on at the sight of the familiar puff-paint lungs. “Yeah, so I made everyone else shirts too.”

“Got them printed out all fancy too. Check out mine.” Sonia turned and held her green tank top taut, giving Annabelle her first good look at it. A pair of dark-skinned hands - covered in bandaids - clutched a glass jar, which had a liver floating in it. The label on the jar read, “Hurt Me Harder.”

“Where’s ours?” Merlin asked. His head was next to his brother, which meant they’d left their guest in the living room, which Annabelle had  _ specifically asked them not to do. _

“Box in the bathroom. I hid them under the sink.”

“When did you,” Annabelle shook her head, bemused.

“You were  _ distracted.” _

“Ew!” Cotton shouted from somewhere behind the twins. “Just need you to know that’s  _ gross _ and we didn’t need the implications!”

“I’ll go get them now.” Claire squeezed between the boys and out of the room, and Annabelle had to force herself not to stare at her ass on the way out.

With Claire gone, Annabelle decided she really should be in the living room, as the host. She grabbed the boys by the ears on the way.

“Lighten the fuck up,” Merlin hissed as they approached the odd whistle-click of Cotton and Whisper’s conversation.

“You never told me what you were whispering about,” Annabelle said. “Consider this retribution.”

Merlin grumbled. “You spent too much time in Whisper’s head,” but didn’t argue, and ended up crammed into the ivory recliner with his brother rather than sit on the couch with Whisper. Annabelle knew he still wasn’t comfortable with them, and understood why, but it was strange to see such an obvious sign of that.

Whisper seemed equally uncomfortable, in fairness. They sat on the couch, both sets of arms held stiffly at their sides. On the mundane couch, they looked wholly out of place, and Annabelle felt deeply sympathetic. Also a bit guilty about the glistening scab on their forehead, but they didn’t seem to mind it.

“I do like the drink,” Whisper said awkwardly. “The green one is very skilled.”

“Can you get drunk? I know you said your digestive system is more, ah, robust than ours, but...” Annabelle asked, just as awkwardly.

“Yes. I have not often, however.”

Annabelle remembered their duty-driven life, and thought that made sense.

Thankfully Sonia and Claire both arrived the next minute to give them something to do. Sonia had two drinks in her hands; one green, the other a mostly empty beer. She polished it off as Claire sat on the ground in front of the coffee table and set her cardboard box down. “Alright,” Sonia said. “Who wants to play spin the bottle?”

“Me!” Felix chimed in.

Incredulous, Merlin just stared at his brother.

“Since we have no objections, that’s a yes.”

“Wait,” Lola said.

“Yeah, Sonia, we have to give out the shirts first,” Claire teased.

“Sorry, darling. I just got, ha, excited.”

“Alright, Merlin and Felix, these are yours.”

“...always get matching…” Merlin muttered belligerently. But then he unfolded it, and said, “Did you draw this?”

“Nah, made it with stock things in photoshop,” Claire admitted. “Does it look good?”

They were both patterned with flames, fading from red at the bottom to yellow at the top. Overlaying that were a pair of rapiers crossed over one another, alternating black and white, and stabbed into kidneys of the opposite color at the bottom corners. Above them were the words, “Kiss your lover,” with kiss crossed out and replaced with “kill” in red, scratched-on font.

Really, they did look good. But when Merlin hugged his to his chest and Felix thanked Claire wholeheartedly, Annabelle was thinking about something else.

“Oh my god,” she whispered. Then leaned in to Felix while Claire was getting out Lola’s shirt, and said as subtly as she could, “You guys had sex?”

“Wh - how did you know?” Merlin hissed.

“Oh my god.”

“Oh my god! Thank you, Claire,” Lola said sweetly.

Annabelle looked over to find a pale orange shirt that stated “eyes peeled” in a bubbly font, with the E’s stylized as daisies. Below them were a pile of different colored eyeballs, in every shade of the rainbow. Next, Claire pulled out a shirt in a familiar shade of purple-blue, and Whisper went from still to  _ frozen. _

“Tadaa! Welcome to the club, friend,” Claire said as she handed it over. Whisper held the shirt in two hands and stared at it, head tilted. Cotton began explaining the picture in their language after a beat.

The words “redemption arc” were spelled out in angular letters, apparently made up of shards of metal. Beneath that was a heart, drawn in neon lines of the same teal and rosy pink that streaked Whisper’s body. As Cotton finished describing it, they lowered their hands into their lap and nodded gratefully.

“And, last but not least!” When Annabelle turned to see what was presumably her shirt, she instead found Claire less than an inch from her face. She would’ve jumped backwards, but Claire kissed her before she could. “For the best girlfriend in the whole world,” she announced.

“We’re not - ”

“Shh, let me have this.” Claire handed her a wad of fabric, and left her to smooth it out.

It was pale blue, and had a darker silhouette of a girl with short hair in twintails and a peter pan collar. The girl’s brain was visible in a pearly white shade, and beneath her were the words “Food for Thought,” rendered in cursive.

“I love it,” Annabelle said softly.

“Well, now the sappy stuff is out of the way!” Sonia set her beer bottle on its side with finality. “I spin first!”

Once again moving before anyone could protest, Sonia spun the bottle and waited with her thumbnail between her teeth and a big grin on her face. It slowed, slowed, past Annabelle and Merlin and then landed… on…

“Woah, no, I do not have the anatomy for -  _ mrph.” _ Cotton’s protest was cut off as she laid a kiss on him. He was visibly disgruntled when she set him down, and he only batted the bottle halfheartedly. “This game is stupid,” he announced.

But still, when it landed on Annabelle, he gave her cheek a delicate little lick that had Claire cooing jokingly.

Next Annabelle was spinning, feeling kind of lightheaded at the thought of it landing on - well, any of them. Lola she could probably handle the best, as the girl was 18, and unlike Sonia wouldn’t mock her forever. She didn’t even want to contemplate it landing on Whisper.

Perhaps as some kind of divine joke, it landed on Claire. “Of course,” Annabelle said amidst Felix’s laughter and Sonia’s wolf-whistling. Still, she smiled as she leaned closer to Claire, and was glad the girl was right beside her when Claire threw her arms over her shoulders. They kissed like they’d been doing it for far longer than they had been - and still, Claire used too much teeth.

“Not girlfriends my ass,” Merlin snarked.

“Let them enjoy themselves,” said Lola.

Remembering the simulation, Annabelle smiled into the kiss (and got bitten for it). She didn’t need to kiss Claire on a national sports stage. She didn’t need the entire world to see their relationship and approve. She just needed this, here, a small group who knew that their circumstances were too far from the normal to be measured, because their own circumstances were the same way.

“...They gonna finish anytime soon?”

“Um, I hope so?”

“Me next!”

Felix snatched the bottle away just as Claire gave Annabelle a parting nip. He crossed his fingers and watched it spin with a toothy grin. Merlin had his crossed, too, but Annabelle heard him muttering, “Not me, not me,” so she thought they were probably hoping for very different outcomes here. Sex or no sex.

Amusingly, it landed on Lola. Annabelle actually chuckled at that, and Claire gave her an odd look. For her part, Lola’s pasty skin had gone blotchy red, but she still puckered her lips and closed her eyes. Felix made a face like he was kissing actual garbage as he scrunched his face up for a quick peck. Merlin laughed, for the first time since Annabelle had met him, like he hadn’t a care in the world.

He crossed his arms over his belly and laughed and laughed, and Lola smiled through the blush still blazing on her face, and Felix’s sour expression melted away. Whisper smiled, just a bit, and Sonia laughed with him, and Cotton slitted his eyes like the most contented of cats. And Annabelle was sitting next to Claire. It was, she decided, a happy ending.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS: Unconnected events grant readers insight into both characters' minds and the author's. Whisper plays computer games. Lola delivers food, and Merlin eats a lot, not necessarily in that order. Claire drops in on the PTA. Long-awaited xeno-porn appears.


	18. Finding the Fetish Capital of the Universe

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guide to this chapter:
> 
> -Part one contains canon-typical body horror.  
> -Part two contains Felix/Merlin stuffing, crossdressing, and sex.  
> -Part three is just a bit of characterization from Lola's point of view.  
> -Part four is a fun PTA related Claire/Annabelle anecdote.  
> -Part five is heavy xeno Whisper/Lily Clover sex, featuring oviposition, alien aphrodisiacs, inhuman amounts of cum, tentacle dicks, and lactation... adjacent stuff.

Whisper stood in the quietly humming room, staring at the curved display which was currently the only thing illuminating it. They weren’t sure why they had done this, except perhaps a morbid curiosity. Lily Clover hadn’t meant to make the Corrupted Ones, but even if they had, Whisper wasn’t sure they would have recognized them for the mirrors they were.

They had watched as the blue one, Annabelle, had broken her way out of the simulation. That tentacle-monster had been unlike anything Whisper had seen on Earth or the planet they’d come from or Homeplanet. It  _ had _ to be a Corrupted One, and they were pretty sure it was specifically Annabelle’s.

So they had confirmed that suspicion, and just for the sake of knowing, had input information on the others as well. Sonia and Lola, they already knew. But what of Claire, Merlin, and Felix?

The twins’ were perhaps the least surprising Whisper had seen. A pair of white snakes with fiery eyes, one of which had a pair of fangs long as swords for delivering a blood-red venom, and the other which constricted and swallowed whole any prey stupid enough to get close. They were knotted together too tightly to ever disentangle.

Claire’s, however, was odd. At first glance it looked like nothing so much as a giant, long-legged  porcupine. Upon closer inspection, each of those “quills” was a weapon of some sort which had been stuck into the creature, presumably in an attempt to kill it.

Even closer, however, and it became so much more unsettling than either the previous presumptions. Those weapons were flesh and keratin, grown out of the monster herself, as if a macabre mockery of anyone who presumed to challenge her. Whisper found it unsettling.

Before closing the program, however, they considered typing their name in. They worried, however. Not that it would show them a version of themself they couldn’t live with.

That it would show them nothing. That Lily Clover wouldn’t have thought to make the blades work with their kind. That they weren’t important enough to -

Knowing that confirmation either way could destroy them, Whisper shut the display down and went to the soaking pool again. They liked it in there; the water seemed to muffle their thoughts as well as the rest of the world.

\---------- **♠** \----------

Merlin knotted one hand in Felix’s hair and pulled harshly. “I  _ hate _ you.”

“I love you!” Felix’s voice was so giddy and high Merlin was doubly glad their Mom was out of the house.

“Next time it’s my turn, I’m gonna bend you over and make you hurt,” snarled Merlin.

“I know,” Felix agreed happily. “But it’s my turn today.”

It took actual effort for Merlin to let go of Felix’s hair and step back. He was already breathing hard, their kissing earlier having gotten him riled up. “Yeah. It is.”

Grey eyes glittering, Felix led Merlin by the hand to his room. In every visible way, it was a mirror image of the one across the hall, but Merlin knew there were dark secrets squirreled away in the walk-in closet and under the silvery wood of the bed frame. Not just because he’d found his own used underwear in here once, but because he had secrets of his own.

One of those dark things was being pulled out from behind Felix’s computer tower now, though it was still hidden inside a nondescript cardboard box. Much like the one Claire had brought to their last group meeting, actually.

“I got it just for you,” he said, handing it over.

Cautiously, Merlin took the box and unfolded the flaps. He almost dropped it as soon as he saw what was inside. “No, nope, I can’t do this.”

“Please, Merlin? You promised.”

And Merlin would’ve insisted, would’ve given up his chance to rip his brother to shreds in a few days, if he hadn’t seen the last item in the box. “...Are those chocolate covered fruits?”

“Made them myself,” Felix said, stepping closer and sliding his hands along Merlin’s forearms. “With hershey’s special dark, too.”

“Okay,” Merlin acquiesced. “But you can’t watch me change.”

“Whatever you say,” Felix agreed. He sat on his bed cross-legged, grabbed his ankles and smiled with too many teeth.

Merlin ducked into his and Felix’s bathroom with something like guilt, even though there was no one in the house to see him do it anyway. He changed fast, felt his cock getting hard even as he did. It was just anticipation, he told himself. It had nothing to do with the ruffled denim skirt, red spaghetti strap shirt, or alice band.

It also, absolutely, had nothing to do with the panties and bra Felix had bought. Even using those words was generous; they were basically ribbons tied in strategic ways. They definitely wouldn’t cover his nipples or his dick, even if either had been soft.

When he went back to Felix’s room, the webcam was already set up. He didn’t protest it; Felix’s computer was too secure for anyone less than an actual professional to break into, and they’d both agreed to the filming when they’d started this.

Felix was painfully gentle as he sat Merlin on the bed and held up the first chocolatey strawberry to his lips. Merlin ate it, silent, unwilling to put on a show and mortified that Felix definitely knew he was already erect. But, when the first bittersweet taste hit his tongue, his eyelashes fluttered against his will.

Smiling, Felix fed him more and more, until he was full and his belly was peeking out from the bottom of the shirt. Groaning, he tried to push away the next pineapple wedge. “Can’t,” he protested weakly. “It’s good, but there’s way too much.”

“Aww,” Felix cooed. He began to rub Merlin’s distended stomach with his free hand. “You sure? Just one more? They taste so nice, they’re making my mouth water.”

And that got Merlin to keep going like nothing else would. Sibling rivalry, or the desire to keep his brother from his food - either way, he managed a few more bites.

Though he wouldn’t admit it, the soft rubbing helped smooth away the ache, and it was so close to where he was leaving a wet spot on the skirt…

_ Finally,  _ Felix reached down and began jerking him off. Merlin didn’t last long, small whimpers that burned humiliation into his belly falling from his mouth. His hips twitched, he felt Felix lift the skirt to show him off to the camera, and then he came. Spurts of white over the clothing Felix had just bought. He hoped it was all ruined.

This too, was part of the agreement. Felix got to come on Merlin’s turn, and Merlin got to come on Felix’s turn. When they actually fucked (when they both came) it didn’t count. They were, in a phrase, fucked up.

\---------- **♥** \----------

Lola picked through her meticulously organized things. This plastic bin was Sonia’s things, and the jewelry box was Annabelle’s. She’d already picked out what she wanted to give back to Claire, Merlin, and Felix. She hummed as she worked, feeling less guilty about the theft now that she was returning… some stuff.

Her room used to be a disgusting mess. Used gum and hair everywhere, and both her grandmas too frail to make it up the ladder to the attic to clean. They’d trusted her to do it herself. She had betrayed that in more ways than one.

These days, she abused the transformation and took advantage of her increased speed, strength, and stamina. It had allowed her to clean the whole thing in a day, and to keep it clean much more easily.

Not that she’d thrown anything out, of  _ course _ she couldn’t do that. But it was all packed away in boxes and bags, stacked up around her room in wobbling towers. None of them were labeled, but they didn’t need to be.

Having decided on her last item, she gathered them up in one arm and went down the ladder once more. She passed her grandmas’ room on the way downstairs, and one shouted out at her, “You better not hog up the kitchen girl! I need it for my pies later!”

She smiled, happy to hear she’d be getting delicious treats soon. “Don’t worry grandma, I’ll be out of the house soon.”

“Be back before curfew, or else!”

“I know, grandma.”

In the kitchen, she packed the treats she’d made earlier into the cooler, then stacked the items on top and carried the whole thing out to the garage. She had a red wagon in there, and a flannel picnic blanket sitting inside it. She took that out, put the cooler and other things in, and then covered it all safely. Once the edges of the blanket were tucked in, she was ready to go.

Down to Sonia’s house first. She’d been watching out her window this morning, and knew Sonia was still asleep, but also knew the kitchen window had been left cracked open. The matcha mochi was in a covered container for precisely that reason, and Lola knew Sonia would appreciate having a treat to wake up to. Especially one filled with red bean paste, and sitting next to her rainbow scrunchie.

Next was Annabelle’s house. Here, Lola could ring the doorbell and trust that the teacher would be up, early hour on a Saturday morning or not.

“Hello?” Annabelle said, pulling the door open promptly. “Oh. Lola, do you want to come in?”

“No thanks Annabelle,” Lola said. “I brought treats and things. These are for you.”

She held out the blueberry milkshake in a mason jar, and a fancy monogrammed pen. Annabelle took both, bemused, and then did a double take at the pen. “I thought I lost this months ago,” she said. “Where did you find it?”

“I stole it,” Lola said with her best sheepish smile. “Is Claire here?”

“I, you  - Claire? Um, no, she will be in a couple of hours, did you want to wait?”

“No, that’s fine. Can you give these to her?” Annabelle took in the pink lemonade icebox pie (and plain notebook from school), then hurriedly set down her own items on a small table in the hallway and accepted Claire’s gifts too. Lola waited as Annabelle got all four arranged safely in place, feeling kind of bad she’d just bowled over her the first time. But she still had a few more things to drop off, and so she powered on.

“These lavender cupcakes are for Whisper. And the milk is for Cotton; it’s infused with catnip. I didn’t have anything to give back to them.” That wasn’t strictly speaking true, but Cotton wasn’t missing his shed fur.

“Do you w-want a ride?” Annabelle asked, with an armful of treats and goodies. “That’s a lot of stuff to carry around.”

“Not really,” said Lola. “I like walking around. It gives me a chance to - see things.”

“See things. Right.” Annabelle smiled, and Lola didn’t actually feel judged, which was a new, and pleasant, experience. Especially after making an effort to be honest with the older woman. “You be safe crossing the street, okay?”

“Okay,” she agreed. “See you later.”

“Oh, and Lola?”

“Hmm?”

“Nice outfit.”

“Oh,” Lola looked down at it. Shades of orange in horizontal stripes on her shirt, and a cream overall skirt. “Thank you!”

Off to the twins’, who she’d made an effort to give individual treats after Merlin’s remark at Claire’s shirts. Claire and Sonia had inspired her to go on this little peace outing, but she wanted to give it her own flair. And so she’d made Felix a banana parfait, and Merlin a rose one. He’d seemed the more dignified of the two, and she suspected he had less of a sweet tooth, but this delivery would confirm it one way or another. Since she planned on watching them eat through their window.

She hoped they liked them. And also liked getting their socks back.

\---------- **♣** \----------

There was a PTA meeting tonight, which Claire had both been looking forward to and dreading since finding out about it. As long as her parents didn’t figure out that Annabelle was the one she’d been sneaking off to hang out with lately, everything would be fine. And they wouldn’t find it out.

Probably.

Setting Claire’s qualms aside, there was no way she was sitting out on this meeting. She’d asked her parents to go, and had been given permission easily enough. They were pulling up to the school now, her dad driving in socks and sandals, as he was wont to do.

“Now, I’ll try my hardest not to embarrass you,” her mom said. “But I just can’t understand why you’re suddenly so interested in this.”

“I dunno, just decided I should know more about how the school runs since I’m actually trying to get my grades up now. I guess.”

“Thata girl!” Her dad turned and clapped her on the back, both their sets of messy curls bouncing as he did so.

The three of them made their way to the meeting room, arriving somewhere in the middle of all the teachers and parents. While Claire’s mom pulled a chair out for her to sit in the corner, Annabelle made frantic eye contact with her. She seemed to be trying to communicate a complicated question using only eyebrows and aborted hand gestures.

Claire grinned and mouthed  _ I can’t understand you. _ Then she sat down, made sure to spread her legs the way she couldn’t in school (thank fuck for jeans), and waited.

Whether for better or for worse, the majority of the meeting was excruciatingly boring. Claire almost wished she  _ did _ care about the particulars of running a school, just so she could be a bit less bored. Seriously, she was a couple of minutes away from falling asleep in her corner.

She only woke up, briefly, towards the end of the meeting. And even then, only because of Annabelle. Which only made sense. Annabelle was just about the only thing in the school Claire found consistently interesting.

A quiet gasp alerted her, and even before other people could turn to look, Claire’s eyes were glued on Annabelle. Specifically, on her bag. Which was slowly tilting, her foot having knocked into it, and Claire saw a specific, ah,  _ thing _ begin to roll out of it.

Hurriedly scanning the room revealed that the drama teacher was present. Couldn’t be a prop she’d made to help him, then. Fuck.

As Annabelle’s blade rolled across the ground to land near Claire’s dad’s feet, Claire realized it even had bits of blood and gore on it. She could almost facepalm. Almost.

Eyes wide enough to show the whites all the way around, Annabelle said, “I’m sorry, I - ”

“Ms. Baker, you like, uh, Magical Princess Neko-tan?”

“Huh? Oh, y-yes, it’s. A bit embarrassing, I know.”

“What? What’s that?” Claire’s dad picked up the knife as he spoke. “And what’s this? Spooky witchcraft stuff?” He cackled, but her mom was giving the blade a mildly frightened look.

“It’s a cosplay prop,” Claire said. She was the queen of bullshit. Butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “From an anime.”

“Nerd stuff,” her dad teased, like he hadn’t played his fair share of D&D. He passed the knife over to Annabelle with one last, “Nice craftsmanship, though! Love the details.”

“Thank you.” Claire fought not to burst out laughing at the dumbstruck look on Annabelle’s face.

The whole thing made waiting until the end of the meeting much more bearable.

\---------- **♦** \----------

Really, the princess was supposed to call in a completely different sort of servant to assist with their current predicament. But when had Lily Clover cared about tradition, or even dignity? Certainly, they never did inside the comfort of their own chambers. Whisper would know.

At the moment, their chest was heavy and swollen with sweet, life-giving milk. Ordinarily the sight would simply have Whisper’s lights flaring a bit brighter and their eyes glued to the floor, but Lily Clover had asked them to watch.

“You’re the only one I trust with this,” they had whispered into Whisper’s ear. And so, shivering, Whisper had agreed.

Their own chest was back to its normal, flat state, since they’d milked themself as soon as the mating season had begun. Using a machine, or (god forbid) one’s hands, was for the common folk. It would not do to waste the milk of a member of the royal family. And so Lily Clover sat on the silk sheets and plush pillows of their bed, a gauzy robe with floral patterns barely hanging off their frame, and waited.

Whisper didn’t know what else to do besides fall to their knees, bend their head, and nuzzle Lily Clover’s clothing out of the way. “You may use your hands,” they said softly. One of their own was coming up to card through the tendrils on Whisper’s head, so much shorter than their princess’.

Tentatively, Whisper raised two hands, though they kept the other two fisted in the sheets - for balance,  _ not _ because they were overwhelmed. And then, holding one breast so gently they ached with it, they latched onto the left nipple and sucked.

Glistening pearls of pale pink liquid had shone on the tip, and burst with an unbearable sweetness on their tongue. They felt the heat in their gut grow with the very first pull, a single meager mouthful all it took to send hormones rushing through their system. The milk told their body, here is a chance to breed, to create beautiful children with two arms and regal bearing -

They knew better.

Just to silence their own mind, they sucked harder. No more milk was forthcoming, however, and they didn’t want to risk hurting Lily Clover by sucking too hard.

For a while they tried massaging their breast softly, but eventually Lily Clover cupped the back of their head and drew them away. “This is not working, is it?”

“I am so sorry, my liege. I will get one who has been trained in - ”

“There is no need for that. Solutions abound, if you only know where to look for them.”

That was one of Lily Clover’s favorite things to say. This time, however, Whisper had no idea what they meant. Slowly, they pulled away, knowing an explanation would come soon.

It did, in the form of Lily Clover slipping one hand beneath their robe to untie their underthings. Skin blazing with light, Whisper brought both hands up to their eyes. “My liege, I cannot, th-that is I am honored but, I, I.” They cut themself off, mortification heavy in their stomach.

“You are done?” Though Lily Clover sounded gently amused, Whisper nodded hastily, as though they had displeased them. “If I release my eggs as well, the milk will come more easily.”

“That is,” Whisper had to swallow hard to get the  _ want _ down and allow more words out. “An excellent idea.”

“You will hold them,” Lily Clover said.

Whisper truly believed they’d hallucinated the words, until Lily Clover gave them an expectant look, and their jerked to their feet. “My liege - ”

“There will be no argument in this.”

Swallowing again, Whisper slowly removed their own loincloth and set it carefully away from Lily Clover’s bedding. Their could already feel their body parting and opening for them, their princess, who they were not supposed to - to do  _ this _ with. This was not something Whisper had dared to dream of having, because it simply was not done. Not with a  _ bodyguard. _

An ugly, six-limbed thing.  _ Pest. _

Lily Clover looked at them as though they were not… that. In fact, as though they were expected to bare even more to their princess, and Whisper would not protest this for fear of having it taken away.

In a room, just the two of them, with Whisper naked and Lily Clover’s clothing in disarray, they felt acutely aware of what they were both about to do. In a small corner of their mind, they wished Lily Clover could be bare as well, though they knew it was impossible. Besides, they were already getting a piece put  _ inside _ them.

Slowly, Lily Clover positioned Whisper flat on their back, a pillow propping up their lower back and their legs spread wide. “You trust me so much,” they marveled as they guided one tit back to Whisper’s lips.

“How could I not?” Whisper kissed the gentle swell of their breast. “You are my everything.”

Something complicated happened to Lily Clover’s face, which Whisper couldn’t see properly due to the mound of magenta flesh in their way. Obediently, they latched on once more, working their tongue against the nipple to get it hard again.

A gentle, questing touch against their thigh had them jerking slightly. That would be Lily Clover’s ovipositor, a prehensile tentacle with rippling ridges on the edges. It found Whisper’s hole not with its tip but with the smooth top, and Whisper whined around their mouthful of flesh as it rubbed up and down. The ruffles which had sealed their body shut now wriggled with delight, as if to invite Lily Clover in.

There was a shocked, choked sound above them, and Whisper almost stopped what they were doing to ask if Lily Clover was okay. Almost released their grip on the sheets in favor of touching that tempting skin, so close. But then the ovipositor made its way in, and they could think of nothing else.

At first the tip went upwards - toward their sheaths. Whisper’s body was wracked with a shudder, pleasure and humiliation both as the tip slipped in the tiniest bit. A hole that was not meant to be fucked, and it would be degeneracy if Whisper were to shove their own fingers there. But from Lily Clover it was a filthy claim, something Whisper had to believe was an accident. The alternative made the humiliation all the more delicious.

Truly, Whisper was a degenerate. It didn’t matter, however, not when Lily Clover breathed a soft sigh and slipped out of the sheath in favor of Whisper’s womb. It was a tight, hugging warmth right now, but this route was meant to expand greatly as needed.

They were so, so deep. Though the tapered end had felt like no stretch at all at the entrance, the thick base was a deep ache all by itself. And then every time those ridges fluttered, well, Whisper shivered and shook beneath the onslaught. They’d never felt  _ anything _ like this.

And then the eggs came. One after another (and years in the future, after a trip through space and a tragedy and a battle, Whisper would look at a duck egg and flush at the precise size of it) filling them up. Each brought with it a new gush of milk, overflowing from Whisper’s mouth at times and dripping down their chin.

Progressively, they could feel their body getting heavier and fuller. Warmth coursed their veins like a wildfire; the milk heightened each touch into a crescendo.

It was impossible to fully control themself, training or no. They clutched at Lily Clover’s flowing robes, made filthy muffled noises, positively writhed. Above them, Lily Clover tried to coo soothing noises, but their own voice was cracking as well.

When they neared the end, Lily Clover was purring with satisfaction. The rumble was good (Whisper wanted to please them) but Whisper needed, they  _ needed, I need - _

“Hush, hush,” Lily Clover pet their hair. “You must not let it out inside. Here, sweet moon’s light. Let me.”

And Whisper would never know if they had truly said that or not. All Whisper would remember, later, was the feeling of Lily Clover’s carapace-covered fingers inside them, prodding at a sheath as the ovipositor retreated. Their cock came out faster than it ever had, made their belly muscles ache with the force with which they had contracted.

Abruptly they were coming all over themselves, though thankfully Lily Clover dodged the copious spurts and they did not spoil the beautiful robes. The come was a faint lavender, which glowed dimly in the dark room. It coated Whisper in streaks from chest to thigh, dripped everywhere, viscous and strong-smelling and disgusting.

Yet feeling so filthy did not diminish the experience for Whisper. And when Lily Clover guided them to their small, connected room, and began to fill their basin with fresh water, they did not complain. It was to be the only time, in all their service to the princess, where Lily Clover took care of them, instead of the other way around.

“You did well,” Lily Clover said to them, so, so gentle. They wet a cloth and brought it up to Whisper’s cheek, wiping away a streak of come they had not realized had reached so far.

“Should I not be saying that to you?” Whisper took the cloth and began wiping their own chest. “You had no need to be so kind to me.”

“If I hurt you, who would stand behind me and catch threats from above?”

Smiling, Whisper said, “I will always stand behind you.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> NEXT TIME ON MAGICAL GIRL SPLEENS... Nothing. Well, unless you guys actually liked reading this, in which case hop on over to my twitter (@twitchingcorpse) to scream at me about sequel ideas! I do have a few ;^)
> 
> I wanted to thank my readers for sticking with me, and also kinda let you guys have a bit of a peek behind the curtain here: this thing was finished (not edited, but like, fully written), almost a year ago now! So thank you all for your patience. As the single longest completed original work of mine, it means a lot that at least a couple people took interest in it.


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